facebook Team Archives - Focus U

Why Resilience Matters?

Frequently we get upset about our failures and allow them to affect our progress. Are we unfair to ourselves? Certainly, we are. What’s the most common thing we do? We dwell in our thoughts and create barriers, we knock at the closed door and wait for it to open. Why don’t we realize that the past can’t be changed, and focus on what’s coming next. We will become a better person. We often do at our workplace, when we are trying to solve a problem even if we know there is no solution. We make false commitments to ourselves, indirectly affecting our own growth.

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TEAM IDENTITYWe recently worked with a senior team which had a new leader. The fact that the leaders working style was very different from the previous leader and the added fact that nearly half of the members were new to the team, made it necessary for the team to get into an offsite – to try and construct a cohesive team identity.

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They say a team is as good as it’s weakest link. When I got into the details to understand this more, it made me realize that there is an I in team. It has been two fantastic years for me working as a facilitator at FocusU. This has enabled me to interact with teams that represent different demographics and has taught me that recognizing individual efforts is very critical to success.

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This is a frequent question we come across in our workshops. Participants in different job roles who would tell us candidly – they don’t have positional authority, they don’t have people reporting to them, and yet they are expected to deliver!

Continue reading “Can You Influence When You Have No Authority?”

Last week, I had a rather interesting conversation with a friend, whose company had taken him for an annual offsite at Goa. The purported objective of the offsite was team motivation and alignment to objectives. And since it was Goa, the word FUN and hence team bonding cannot be left behind either.

“How did it go?”, I asked.

“Great fun, all of us really had a ball”, he said. “It was much needed for the team, considering all the turmoil we have been through recently”.

Continue reading “Why Invest In Team Building Activities?”

Of late, we have had an increasing trend of clients requesting for Team building sessions to be conducted in Hindi or that interesting mix of English & Hindi, popularly referred to as Hinglish.

A few months back, I had this enlightening experience in Singapore. I was just heading out to join the group, when one of the organizers, a Singaporean Chinese, walked up to me and asked me in a worried tone: “Sid, do you know Mandarin?”.  I guess the answer was very self evident from my very Indian looks, because before I could answer her, she spoke again and this time sounding deeply worried “Sid, we have a situation. There are two ladies in the group who don’t understand English at all. They are only comfortable with Mandarin. Since all our staff understands Mandarin, will it be possible to get someone else, who could do this session in Mandarin?”. And then, perhaps so that I wouldn’t take it personally, she added: “We don’t want anyone to feel left out, you know. I hope you do understand”.

Continue reading “How To Facilitate In Vernacular?”