The Leadership Development Carnival for March 2011 is now live!

The Leadership Development Carnival for March 2011 is now live at Dan McCarthy's Great Leadership blog.

Dan's blog is a great source to learn and understand Leadership Development practices from a practitioner. This month's carnival features more than 25 posts from around the world on Leadership Development.

My post "Critically yours..." is also featured in this carnival. Click here to visit the Carnival page for March 2011.

Critically yours...

Image via Wikipedia

My wife and I along with my parents and brother went to see my son's class dance at his school annual day. All the children from his class had to participate in this dance on Traffic Lights and since these children are from Lower Kindergarten (LKG), we did not expect great synchronization or a perfect output. And they did match our expectation. It was fun though, looking at all the kids dancing (while some were crying or standing still) and I thought my son did a good job! My parents, though, thought otherwise. They had a list of areas where he could have done better.

This instance made me think of times when I have been quite critical too (it runs in the genes??)! Being a person obsessed with perfection, I used to get critical of myself and others - whether it was at home, work or church. Over the course of time, I have learnt my lesson and thought I will share three simple steps that we can follow to avoid being overly critical.

Step 1: Pause - The moment you feel that you are trying to criticize somebody or something, "Pause". Pausing gives you time to understand your feelings and evaluate your actions.

Step 2: Ask - Ask yourself if this situation warrants criticism or an alternate action. Can you find anything positive about this situation?

Step 3: Act - If you can get away without criticizing a person, then just do that. If the situation demands that you have to be critical, then be critical!

So, when do you get critical of a person's actions or activities? I believe that when a person has received enough counseling, coaching, support and time from you and is still repeating an inappropriate action or activity, you can get positively critical with that person.

The next time my son does not so good coloring in his coloring book, I will Pause, Ask myself and Act appropriately!

Related article

• You only have the right to criticize if you have the will to help - Be part of the solution ... (timesunion.com)

I wish you enough training to do your job well!!

Image by verbeeldingskr8 via Flickr

Paulo Coelho's books are awesome and he dishes out some lovely stories and thoughts on his blog.

Today's post (Amplify'd below) speaks of the words "I wish you enough" as meaning "I want you to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them".

These words seemed so relevant to me as a Learning and Development professional. They pulled my thoughts back to nearly nine years ago, when I started my Learning and Development journey.

I planned too many good things for my first batch of trainees. I had a 200 page binder with so much of information that would have absolutely made them feel impossible to do their job! I was speaking most of the time! I told them what to do!

I thought I was right. I thought I was being a great trainer.

Today, I realize my folly. I could have let them explore and discover. I could have made them "fill the gaps". I could have made them more well rounded!

This realization has helped me ask myself the following questions before I train:
- Do people really need to learn this? (this is the greatest sin!!)
- What intervention is just necessary to do their jobs?
- What activities would help trainees perform well on their job?
- Can information be supplied as job aids?
- Do people really need to remember so much? (we are so used to learning-by-rote!)
- What support systems are available for trainees to apply their learning on-the-job?
So, now, I wish trainees just enough training to do their job well!

Amplify’d from paulocoelhoblog.com
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/aqbeb

Recently I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together at the airport. They had announced the departure. Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the father said, ‘I love you, and I wish you enough.’

They kissed and the daughter left. The father walked over to the window where I was seated. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but I could not refrain from asking:  ‘When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, ‘I wish you enough.’ May I ask what that means?’

He began to smile. ‘That’s a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.’  He paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail, and he smiled even more. ‘When we said, ‘I wish you enough,’ we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.’  Then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more..

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting… I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good- bye.

Read more at paulocoelhoblog.com

Arguing is Pointless - really??

Peter Bregman, in his interesting article "Arguing is Pointless" at the Harvard Business Review blog shares that Arguing is a "guaranteed losing move".

This is a view that I partially agree with. I am usually a person who would try to figure out common ground and resolve problems. I try to listen (which is an area that I work on all the time!) and understand the other person's perspective before sharing my thoughts. These work out well for me!

However, there are scenarios where arguments are indeed necessary - in a positive way!

When issues have to be brought out, questions answered or perspectives understood, arguments are important.

Practically though, since we see only negative arguments all the time, we do not seem to realize that there are indeed healthy arguments!

"Arguing is pointless" - when it is not a healthy argument!!

Amplify’d from blogs.hbr.org

Not just in that situation with that police officer. I'm talking about arguing with anyone, anywhere, any time. It's a guaranteed losing move.

When I think back to just about every argument I've ever participated in — political arguments, religious arguments, arguments with Eleanor or with my children or my parents or my employees, arguments about the news or about a business idea or about an article or a way of doing something — in the end, each person leaves the argument feeling, in many cases more strongly than before, that he or she was right to begin with.

Arguing achieves a predictable outcome: it solidifies each person's stance. Which, of course, is the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve with the argument in the first place. It also wastes time and deteriorates relationships.

There's only one solution: stop arguing.

And if it's too late? If you're in the middle of an argument and realize it's going nowhere? Then you have no choice but to pull out your surprise weapon. The strongest possible defense, guaranteed to overcome any argument:

Listening.

Because listening has the opposite effect of arguing. Arguing closes people down. Listening slows them down. And then it opens them up. When someone feels heard, he relaxes. He feels generous. And he becomes more interested in hearing you.

That's when you have a shot of doing the impossible: changing that person's mind. And maybe your own. Because listening, not arguing, is the best way to shift a perspective. Read more at blogs.hbr.org

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/apq3g

Should we not close our schools, colleges and L&D organizations?

Dr John Sullivan spoke of how education is not a pre-requisite for a good hire during his session on “Managing Talent Acquisition to Improve the Quality of Hire” at the recent NASSCOM HR Summit. In a country like India, where grades, ranks, distinctions and Gold Medals mean a lot, this thought has a huge impact!

Image via Wikipedia

In fact, a participant who was visibly agitated was telling Dr Sullivan that India was a country in which education was respected a lot and that the professor’s thought isn’t right in the Indian context. The professor, however, stuck to his stand with a smile.

The more you think of it, the professor’s stand seems truer than ever. Look at Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Micheal Dell or Azim Premji  or this big list from Wikipedia! All of these people made it big without fancy degrees!

If all these people made it big and are respected leaders, then why do we need education? Why do we need training programs and L&D departments?

Should we not just close all our schools, colleges and L&D departments and just let people learn the way they want to learn?

The problem is not with having schools, colleges or L&D departments. The problem is with the kind of learning that is imparted at these places.

According to me the following should be some of the key effects of education:

- Improving Skills / Understanding of basics
- Ability to apply principles to work at the right situation
- Showing different perspectives and helping the learner see different perspectives
- Understanding and dealing with different kinds of people
- Improving structural thinking
- Helping one condense large amounts of information into presentable chunks
- Increasing inquisitiveness to find solutions to problems
- Understanding one’s own areas of strengths and weaknesses
- Appreciating the beauty and design of elements
- Personal Leadership and Mastery

If schools, colleges and L&D organizations are going to stick to “by rote learning”, "death by PowerPoint" and “education to clear assessments", these objectives would never be met.

Like Seth Godin says in his book "Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?" that this kind of education system is meant for the Industrial age where we wanted to mass produce everything. A good education system creates “artists” who can create masterpieces!

So, are we creating engaging, inquisitive, positive, colorful, useful, personalized, innovative learning experiences that create “artists” and “leaders” or are we going to stick to the status quo and create mass produced content that is dished out at unsuspecting individuals?

The choice is ours. And our choice has a great impact on our schools, colleges and L&D organizations along with the people that we are meant to serve!

Strengths, Pygmalion and My Local Church Choir

During the last couple of weeks I was busy coaching my local Church Choir for an important church event presided by the Diocese’s Bishop.

When we started this new choir a couple of months ago, there was a lot of skepticism about if they would be able to do a good job – most people expected this group to fail. Their predecessors had been there for a long time and had created a reputation which these new people had to meet or exceed. However, they did an excellent job during the event earning the compliments of the Parish priest and the parishioners.

So, how did we manage to do an excellent job?

Understanding Strengths: To start off, I understood the strengths of each member of the team and also the overall strength of the team. My assessment helped me realize that this was a team that was comfortable with low pitch, high tempo, and simple songs. All of them also had the drive and determination combined with some competitiveness to prove that they can do a job as good as or better than the old choir! Initially, my benchmark of them was based on the old choir – so, I had a lot of unlearning to do and I had to open my eyes to see the real strength in them. (Marcus Buckingham writes a lot on this in his “Now, Discover your strengths”)

Matching the project to Strengths: Once, I understood their strengths, we picked songs that matched their strengths. Since these songs matched their strengths, they became confident during the practice sessions that they will be able to do a good job.

Using the Pygmalion Effect: Even though, they had the drive and determination to succeed, they also had a lot of self-doubt! It was during these moments that I, as the coach & keyboard player, had to pump in lots of motivation, energy and enthusiasm into them. The more I started appreciating them for the great job that they did, they did an even better job during the next practice session.

Identifying workarounds for Weaknesses: This was an important aspect that had to be taken care of. There were certain parts of the songs where I knew for sure that they were not able to catch up with the correct tune. First, I tried giving them more practice for some of these parts - and they got better. However, there were other parts where they would take ages to catch up – for these parts, I added a workaround where the keyboard would take over and they would play a lesser part. This ensured that the overall output was good and the team was also not stressed out trying to do something that they cannot do (unless they worked on it for ages!!!)

As a leader, most of us face such challenges while working with teams. I feel that the following thoughts from this experience would be useful for all leaders:

-         Do not underestimate your team

-         Do not compare them with your old team from the same or different organization

-         Do understand your team’s strengths

-         Do try to customize your team’s work based on their strengths

-         Do not try to push people to do things that they are not capable of. Try a workaround.

-         Do, however, try to give necessary training that would help them overcome or workaround their weakness, if it can be corrected easily

-         Don’t forget to motivate them and make them understand how good they are. But don’t overdo to a level where they become complacent.

-         Don’t forget your goal – it is what you & your team are working towards!

August Leadership Development Carnival

This month's Leadership Development Carnival has been hosted by Jason Seiden at his blog. (Thank you Jason!)

He has put together thoughts from nearly 33 blogs on Leadership Development.

Here's how he ends his post on the Carnival:

"There you have it. And now, you can:

1. Ignore these great insights and fail miserably.
2. Heed these great insights and give it your all until you either succeed… or fail spectacularly.

The choice is yours."

My post on "The Leader's Mastery Journey" is also featured in this carnival.

NASSCOM HR Summit - Day 2

The second day of the NASSCOM HR Summit (July 29^th) had some interesting speakers and thoughts shared. Here are some of the thoughts from the second day.

Creating Democratic Workplaces:  Anand Pillai from HCL anchored a session on “Creating Democratic Workplaces in a Gen Y dominated Environment” which was humorous, dynamic and thought provoking - usual Anand style! He was sharing that the following aspects would help in creating more democratic workplaces:

• Reverse Accountability – by leaders towards their team members
• Transparency and Openness in Communication and
• Ability to get day to day issues addressed promptly through an automated tracking system with strict turnaround time limits

Social Networking – Leveraging or Lamenting: Nandita Gurjar of Infosys shared her take on Social networking, its uses and issues. Anand Pillai, who was the Chairperson for this session invited questions to the speakers only through Twitter. The other speaker was Arvind Rajan of LinkedIn.

Nandita had the opinion that the organization had to give accurate data to the employees to share on social networks. This would help in arresting the dissemination of incorrect information to the outside world. She was also open about how they brought a social network inside Infosys after the recent external social media outburst by employees. The main aspects of their current social media policy are that employees are not allowed to share confidential / client related / IPR related information and also follow a simple code of conduct which essentially says that social media may be considered as an extended workplace when sharing work related information.

Transformed Job Market: In this session, Aadesh Goyal of Tata Communications spoke of the challenges in recruiting laterals. Balasubramaniam Iyer of Reliance Retail, while speaking of the scarcity of the right entry-level talent in the retail industry, shared that they were so desperate to fill requirements that they are open to saying that “Trespassers would be recruited!” He advocated more industry-academia partnership to encourage industry ready talent at the entry level.

Managing Talent Acquisition to Improve Quality of Hire: Dr John Sullivan shared thoughts and methods to measure and improve the Quality of Hire in this workshop. The Quality of Hire can be measured by quantifying On-the-job performance (e.g. job/work output, quality of work, rates of innovation, customer satisfaction rates, performance in initial training, performance appraisal scores etc), exceptional characteristics demonstrated during the first year of an employee (e.g. diversity, assuming leadership role, agility, technical skills, etc.) and the after-hire negative factors (e.g. early turnover, forced termination, accident rates, attendance issues, etc.).

All izz well…??: Raj Ramachandran of Accenture, in his interactive workshop on “India’s Corporate Talent Pool – All izz well… is it?”, spoke of three aspects that could increase the talent pool: more women in the workforce, better quality of education and bringing in a Bollywood connection to talent & learning. He also gave us a lot of time to discuss thoughts on this in break-out groups and present it back to the entire group.

Cracking the Code on Business Agility - Lessons from high performing learning organizations: Bob Danna of Bersin Associates and Daniel Bielenberg of Accenture, shared that the modern enterprise L&D program needs deep specialization and learning agility. This would be possible only if L&D acts as the enabler and facilitator, with the actual learning driven by employees and managers themselves. A learning culture, where there is a willingness to share knowledge and also reflect on the past, is necessary to create such an enterprise.

Overall, this NASSCOM HR Summit was very impressive. Looking forward to the next edition of the Summit!