There is a secret force that helps us to achieve our goals – our thoughts. These thoughts direct an achiever to keep achieving and a non-performer to keep losing in life. The difference between Low-fliers and Achievers is not how they behave, but what happens in their inner world. The very thoughts we run in our mind, run our life.
Tag: Facilitation
The workplace is an ever-evolving arena. Decades ago, women were not typically found in the office. Today women are found in every position, from the front lines of customer service to CEOs in multi-national corporations, to presidents of nations. This is a major change, certainly, but it is only one of many. Outside of women in the workplace, the cross-cultural dimension of the workspace has drastically shifted throughout the last century. Business has always crossed borders and boundaries, from the Silk Road that spanned China and Kazakhstan through India to Persia, and beyond, to the digital giant Google, with offices in over 40 countries today.
The setting: A quintessential Mumbai local train. This particular coach was pretty much packed. As the train labored its way ahead, with its heavy burden – the crowd inside, rocked back and forth in their seats to its steady rhythm. Most faces wore a blank resigned look, perhaps contemplating their day ahead or perhaps catching up on a moment of quietness, amidst their bustling lives.
I was travelling to Chandigarh, when a man sitting beside me asked, “Are you a CEO?” I was surprised to hear the question, as I was just like anyone else travelling to Chandigarh. I said, “No Sir, I am not, I am only wearing this suit as I have a meeting to attend (assuming that my attire made him ask this question)”. He said, “No, you are a CEO” and I insisted, “No Sir, I am not”. He smiled and said, “You are the CEO of your First name Last Name Pvt Corp”. That was interesting to me so I asked him what that means! He explained, “You are the CEO of your own brand, i.e. yourself and you take ownership of the services you provide to anyone. You are responsible for your own marketing, sales, training and human resources (networks). You are responsible for the value you create for others”.
Giving feedback – is that an Art or a Science? Let us leave that argument for the pundits. The bottom line though is that it is one life skill that all of us would do good to understand and master.
A lot of times it is hard to decide who is a better fighter, the one who can hit really hard one time or the one who can hit again and again faster. It’s an age – old debate about Magnitude vs. Frequency. But the answer becomes quite evident if we dig deeper into the Discipline of Martial Arts. It’s the quest for a right balance between the two.
Continue reading “Why Consistency Matters In Service Delivery?”
The below blog was posted by me a couple of years back in another blog. However, going through the same, I just realized that even through these years – the fundamental question to be answered in the sales profession remains the same, only perhaps even more acute: How does one show value to a customer in the process of doing a sale – in this era of Google?
We do a lot of our team building workshops as part of team off-sites that clients organize. During the planning of such programs, one of the common questions that we get from organizers is to suggest gifts to give to the team during the offsite. This is trickier than it sounds! I remember talking to a participant during a workshop in Goa, where they had been presented yet again with a Hawaiian shirt! This is what he had to say – “I am not sure why we get these every time we do an offsite. This is the 3rd offsite we are doing in Goa in the past 5-6 years I have been with the company and every year we get the stereotyped Hawaiian Shirt! It has become a joke within the team. The people who organize these meets seem to have absolutely no clue about what we would really like or they don’t spend any time thinking what to give!”
One of the pleasures of being in a job where you are constantly in front of groups, conducting workshops, is the instantaneous positive feedback one gets at the end of a workshop that goes well. This is especially true for Team building workshops that we conduct. A colleague of mine had written a very nice article about the same, where he talked about a HUGS-BAROMETER – the number of hugs one gets as a Facilitator at the end of the workshop. I can think of few other jobs that give such instant feedback and gratification!
At times, we open our workshops with an interesting activity called the ESVP Check-in, wherein we invite participants’ to classify themselves basis their own engagement levels towards the program – at that point in time.