Continue reading “Book Learning: A Whack On The Side Of The Head”
Author: naren@hybreed.co
Sometimes all of us are so caught up in the never ending treadmill of work that we fail to appreciate the small things that our team mates do for us. This is an inspiring true story about a US Navy pilot shot down in the Vietnam War, who had a life changing experience, which made him much more appreciative of all people who, in ways small or big, contributed to his success…
Source: Pixabay
Showing appreciation: Who’s packing your parachute?
In the words of William Matthews, “The first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies into one point, and to go directly to that point, without looking left or right.” A human mind can be distracted pretty easily and as new things keep coming in our lives, it’s natural for us to get overwhelmed with new ideas and set our priorities incorrectly. If you want to bring change to your life, it’s important to know what’s most valuable to you. In short, it’s about setting your priorities correctly. But, how do you do that?
Continue reading “Prioritising Like A Pro : The ABCDE Method”
As Patrice Lencioni mentions in his book 5 dysfunctional of the team, the absence of trust is one of the biggest drawbacks experienced by a team. This becomes even more relevant and important in the virtual context, with everyone working remotely with limited interactions. The lack of face to face conversations increases the risk of miscommunication and reduced inter-personal trust. Thus, it is important for a leader to help build trust among his team members.
Continue reading “5 Ways Leaders Can Build Trust In Virtual Teams”
Program
Reed Manch Exhibitions | Leadership Development
Objective
To take the whole team through an immersive learning experience that would help all participants answer the question: “What is Everyday Leadership” and how does one exhibit it in their behaviors?
Solution
The workshop was carefully designed keeping the profile of all the participants in mind. We were clear that we did not want to introduce any esoteric Leadership model that participants wouldn’t relate to. Hence the whole intervention was designed around
The Leadership Challenge construct.
Instead of introducing a new theory, we started by asking participants to list down their own “Best leadership experience ever” regardless of whether it was in their corporate work at office or anywhere else – at home, school, college or public life. From the stories that naturally emerged, we put brought to life the “Five behaviors of exemplary leaders.”
The workshop brought home the point for participants that – Leadership is for everyone. It is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. Leadership is actually a process ordinary people use when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. It highlighted to everyone that they could make extraordinary things happen by liberating the leader within themselves.
Through an immersive workshop experience that involved a mixture of introspection, discussion, debate, sharing of experiences, stories from around the world and experiential activities, FocusU brought to life the paradigm of Leadership in a language so simple that it made a difference to all participants who embarked on this enthralling journey.
Impact
Here is what Anuj Mathur, the Managing Director of Reed Manch Exhibitions had to say about the whole intervention:
“The Leadership workshop helped all of us to take a step back and analyse ourselves on the kind of leadership traits we have and that we don’t have. How we could all become better leaders and help others grow along with us. It has been the most effective workshop for multiple levels in our organization. It helped our Leaders shine. It focused on how leaders can put their thoughts together in a more efficient manner, take ownership and be united with the team . The training has been extremely beneficial, our people are more oriented and have a clear vision on how to work with their teams seamlessly to deliver best results. We got coached on “One Team One Dream” vision which really helped the staff to be on the same page while performing tasks. The fun quotient mixed with the tasks made it an enjoyable and knowledgeable experience.”
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To make sense of the world around us, humans rely heavily on their intuition along with their intelligence. Intuition is marvellous, indeed. In the blink of an eye, in the absence of much information or data points, it helps us assess, judge, and decide the better of given choices. Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, “Blink” celebrates the marvels of the intuitive mind, in a highly influential manner. So much so, that it left an impression on thousands of people that intuitive decision making was in some ways ’magically’ superior to careful, deliberate decision making.
Continue reading “How Can You Make Better Defensible Decisions?”
Reflecting back on the early nineties, when I began my career as a medical sales rep, I was a shy youngster, who wouldn’t like to stand-out. However once, very early in my career, I stood up to the interviewing board of Sun Pharma, when they were selecting for an 8-member team (across India) to discuss clinical studies with doctors.
Program
HUL North Regional Leadership Team (RLT) Journey
Objective
Charting a journey for the regional leadership team to help build a bond between each other (strengthen team effectiveness) and align the larger team towards a single goal
Solution
The team had a new leader who had just returned after a stint overseas. Some of the team members had also joined the team recently from various parts of HUL. There was a clear need to bring the team together and strengthen alignment.
Working closely with the HR Business Partner and the Leader, we first agreed on a few things:
1. Bringing the team together would not happen through one intervention. We agreed that this would be a “Team Journey” to be done through a series of interventions spread out over a period of time.
2. The journey of aligning the entire team should start from the top
The first workshop was a 2-day intervention done in an informal setting. The journey was kicked off with a session using the MBTI tool – since every journey starts with a better understanding of self. The tool also helped in understanding team dynamics, blind spots, conflict zones, communication preferences. All this is a safe, light atmosphere that encouraged exploration. This was followed by a self-disclosure exercise using the Johari construct. The intent was to build trust based on vulnerability. The session was kicked off by a truly authentic and heart touching sharing by the leader – who put forward his vulnerabilities in a candid manner. That set the tone for the rest of the day, with each story coming from a similar authentic core. By the end of the day – a web of connections had been built between the team members, without them even realizing it.
The next day, the team was introduced to Lego Serious Play. Through the immersive methodology that lends itself to stories and conversations, the team talked through its challenges and strengths. By the end of the day, they had arrived upon a 2 year vision for the team and also a guiding mantra and inspiring identity for themselves. The foundation for the team to succeed was perhaps set firmly on that day.
Through the next two years, we conducted a series of 6 different interventions. These included team cascades, further interventions with the RLT, cascading these team connect interventions deeper down into the managerial team, fun team experiences to create shared memories and team feedback sessions. To be with this team through their entire journey of Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing & Adjourning has been one of our most satisfying experiences as Facilitators.
Impact:
The first intervention we conducted was seen as so impactful that internally, for the next two years, those days were referred to as, “Historic Thursday- Friday”. It makes us blush but it makes us extremely proud too.
The team had a dream run of achieving outstanding business results and a complete turnaround in execution metrics for all functions across the region. They also picked up a majority of the internal awards across the organization.
Here is what Aanchal Grover, the HR Business Partner of the team had to say about the whole intervention, much after the journey: “This definitely has to be the most fulfilling stint of my HR career till date. Using people engagement, leadership and team effectiveness to fuel business turnaround and results upped my faith in the power of the ‘more human approach’ that I have always believed in.
That ‘historic Thurs-Fri’ truly created magic for us! That web of deep connections that we established then grew over time, and we saw what a group of united, committed and intelligent individuals can achieve as ‘One Team’. The FocusU team were true catalysts in this journey, they made a huge difference without making their presence felt. Their support, understanding of our requirements, empathetic approach and deep desire to make a real difference to us sets them apart and makes them truly unique players in their field. They are crusaders for the ‘more human approach’ in everything that they do which the world so needs at this point in time.
Most of us have moved on from that stint now, but the web of connections still holds strong, beyond roles, organizations and even country borders! We are proud of what we achieved together and to me personally, that’s a demonstration of the power of a truly engaged and connected business unit.
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To say that the past few years of working in a start-up environment has been exhilarating would be an understatement! There have been ups and downs, some good decisions and some which make us cringe when we think back – but if someone were to ask if we regret this move, then the answer is clear – “Not a chance!”. One of the perks of our job is the opportunity to interact with excellent senior leaders in different verticals as part of the leadership workshops that we do – and we have come away richer from each such intervention! One of the other aspects which we enjoy is the opportunity to have conversations with people who have undertaken similar journeys as ours and learn from their stories. However these days, we are also getting to meet people who are poised to take a leap of faith into starting something of their own and want to connect to seek our counsel. While the conversations differ (and we are nowhere qualified enough to advise some of these industry stalwarts), there are still some aspects of our journey which have translated into useful leadership lessons for us, which we do share with them. We hope some of these would be useful for others venturing into a similar, unfamiliar territory.