The 3 Part Play

With my last blog on storytelling many of you would have got access to your internal stories and you would have seen possibly some of them limiting or dis-empowering you. We can call those internal stories as our past (now when I say past, not just the past of 20 - 30 years but the past of day to day life meaning yesterday, day before yesterday, last week or even sometimes just the previous moment). This past can be termed as the Part 1 of the 3 part play.

The part 2 is the present and part 3 is the future.  Now I need you to spend some time reflecting on how are you playing the game in part 2 ? How much of part 1 is impacting your part 2 and how part 2 will impact part 3 ?

For most people part 2 is a reflection of part 1.  So one may say that I am not part of the top management of my company in part 2 because I did not do MBA from a top institute in part 1.  I am not happy in my married life in part 2 because I did not marry my first crush in part 1.  I am not progressing in my career in part 2 because the boss of part 1 is still sticking around in part 2.  I guess many such part 2 scripts must be coming in your mind as you read this. While most of the part 2 things that I mentioned may look real to most people but they are just a set of our internal storytelling.  If this continues you can very well guess how will part 3 look like. Exactly like part 2.  There is no possibility of one taking any new action to create a new part 3.

I want you to consider a new way of looking at part 3. Just imagine what would you like to see happening for you in part 3 and do a declaration of that.  So if you want to become part of top management then do a declaration that by end of 3 years from now I will be part of top management.  If you want to progress in your career do a declaration that you will move to the next position in next 2 years and so on.  Once you do the declaration of part 3 you will start seeing yourself in a completely new light. You will now start taking action on what it would take you to get there in part 3. You will no longer be the victim of part 1 and 2. There are high chances of you no longer blaming anybody for any parts of your life but taking complete responsibility and accountability of not only part 3 but also part 2 and 1. So you will now start talking to key members of your top management and understand their expectations, you will take up a course on any of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platforms like Coursera, EDX etc. on topics like Business Acumen, Strategy etc.  As you start knowing more about the top management you will realize and appreciate the pressure they go thru and understand why they did not approve your paid course last year.  Now with the declaration you took action to find out free courses and not kept cursing the top management.  The same spouse with whom you were unhappy will start giving you happiness as the issue was never with the spouse but the way you saw him or her in part 2 as a reflection of part 1.  In fact you will recall that in the first 3 marriage anniversaries you had celebrated each anniversary in a exotic location but after the first child was born you have been celebrating marriage anniversary as a ritual going to the nearby restaurant known for candle light dinners but the enthusiasm died as soon as the candle in the restaurant got over in most anniversaries because you were so caught thinking about top management and your boss.  You will start seeing that your wife takes the second child in her arms while going to drop the first child to the school bus stop so that you can go to Gym, does groceries on week days so that you can relax on weekends, takes your parents to doctors as you come in late every day and doctors are available only till 9:00 PM and this list can go on. In the light of all new possibilities you get your DISC psychometric assessment done that was always freely available in your training department and you realize that you are very low on “C - Compliance” (a attribute that indicates that you are not comfortable with too detailed reports with lot of numbers) and possibly that was a point of contention between you and your boss as he possibly was high on “C” and would always look for detailed report.  So now instead of blaming and becoming upset with the boss you now start adapting to his style. 

Now you start seeing many new possibilities and take actions but there is also a possibility that while reading this blog your internal story will still tell that “Yogesh does not know about the politics in the top management of my company so how can I declare” or “Yogesh does not know the way my spouse has treated me or let him spend a week with my boss to know how terrible he is and so on”. However if I was to think that you are going to think this way then what will happen to the declaration I have made for my part 3 of transforming every person who I touch in any type of interaction including my blog.  Hope you will join me in creating a new part 3 and do a declaration and keep taking actions in part 2.

Life is too short to not declare and take actions. Many of my earlier blogs can be a good read especially the “Inside Out or Outside In” while you declare part 3. I look forward to hearing about your declarations of part 3 and do let me know if I can be of any help in your journey of creating a beautiful part 3 for you and everybody around you.. 

Storytelling

There is lot of importance these days on storytelling in the world of communication and presentation.  While it is crucial for people to pick up the storytelling skills so that they can communicate and engage with their audience really well, it is equally important to listen to the storytelling that constantly happens in our brain. In fact the internal storytelling has a strong correlation with external storytelling.

Reading this blog the stories that your brain may tell you is "these days blogs of Yogesh are all about brain" or "looks like Yogesh is doing some course on how brain works" or "this blog is again on brain so let me read it later'.  There is a possibility that none of the above stories are happening in your brain but these are stories my brain is telling me about you. While these stories are light stories and may not have a big impact but let me talk about some deep internal storytelling of our brain.  

Imagine you are a 8 year old child who is selected to sing a poem at the republic day function in your school. Your parents have spent every evening for last 3 weeks helping you rehearse. Your father even took 2 days of leave and invited few relatives from home town to attend your performance. The D day comes and everybody is excited about the event including you.  The curtain is on and you stand being the curtain all set to deliver with your frill dress that your mother got it stitched especially for this event from her own savings. As the curtain opens you see a huge crowd sitting in the auditorium and you become extremely nervous.  The nervousness does not go away and you forget the first few lines of the poem. Your teacher who has also helped you prepare, your parents and relatives who are sitting in the first row are all trying their best to motivate you to get started but more they encourage you to sing the more you become nervous.  Finally you sheepishly dragging your feet move out of the stage and someone says "popat" which in marathi language slang means looser. Your brain tells you an internal story that you will be a looser for rest of your life. Let's fast forward your life and you are 28 years, very successful in your career but whenever someone invites you to address a gathering or an event your internal story says "popat".  Now what happened when you were 8 on that republic day may not happen now but the internal storytelling is so powerful that it convinces you that you will continue to be a looser when you address a large gathering.  So no matter how many storytelling sessions you attend you will not be able to demonstrate that skill until the internal storytelling is first mastered. 

While this story was a very deep long story of your life let me share a story that may happen in your day to day life.  Imagine you are a disciplined employee who always sends the weekly report to your boss sharp at 11:00 AM Monday morning.  One Monday you were tied up with some work that your boss had given to you on Friday and you miss out on sending the weekly report at 11:00 AM. The boss walks to your desk at 11:30 and asks you where is the weekly report.  There is a possibility that your brain will immediately tell a story that he does not have any appreciation for my timeliness, hard work.  I have been sending the report without fail for last 6 months and just for this one instance of delay he is following up with me and that too when I was busy with the work he had given to me and so on. In reality what should have happened is that the moment your boss asked for the report you should have said that I am working on the other issue and will send the report in an hour but our brain works so fast that we at times get embroiled by its storytelling. Now with this internal storytelling when you meet your boss over lunch or anybody else, no matter how much training you have got on external storytelling there will still be glimpses of discontent in your behavior because of this internal storytelling.

So in the upcoming festival of Diwali spend some time reflecting on all your internal stories and empower yourself to not get dis-empowered by any such long drawn or day to day stories.  I look forward to hearing what internal stories were you able to listen to and how you have now empowered yourself to really become a great external storyteller.

STRESS Unveiled Part II

I recently took over as the head of leadership development for Wipro BPO and in last one month I had the opportunity to spend time on the BPO floor meeting the teams in both voice and non voice business.

The environment in BPO has a constant sense of urgency as everything needs to be done here and now.  More or less every transaction has a touch point with the customer or customer’s customer with a high degree of customer involvement and constant interaction with the Wipro team.  It is a challenge to maintain the same level of energy and enthusiasm for an agent from his first call when he or she logs in to the last call when he or she logs out especially if the agent lands up handling back to back irate customer situations.  In order to keep the customer satisfaction levels high there are Quality Assurance people who monitor a set of agent calls every day.  During my flight back from Wipro BPO Delhi I was reading the book “Quite Leadership” by David Rock and I was thinking that how many times do we observe our conversation with people like the way the Quality Assurance personnel were doing for the agents?  How will observing those conversations improve my relationships with people around me?  Will the improved relationships help in managing my stress? I have seen people either getting more stressed when they go to work or for some people when they come back home as I guess the relationship is not going well at those places.

In last decade there has been phenomenal research done on how our brain works and its impact on stress.  As a sequel to my earlier blog on Stress I would like you to consider practicing 3 observations and see how that helps in managing your stress levels.

First Observation – Observe the Maps in your brain:  Maps are built in our brain with our experiences.  Let me talk about Maps with an example.  Imagine you are born in a religious Hindu Brahmin family, the first map that will get built possibly is to go to temple every day after taking bath and never wear shoes inside the temple especially where the deities reside.  Now imagine you are born in a religious Catholic Family in Mexico, the first map that will get built possibly is to go to Church every Sunday and always wear the best shoes in the Church.  The two maps are completely opposite.  Mexicans have similar looks like Indians and let’s bring the Mexican on his first visit to India and he does not know much about Indian culture.  In first few days he comes to know that Temples are like Churches and he decides to visit the temple.  There is likelihood that he may enter the Temple with his best shoes and imagine the Hindu Brahmin after his bath sees him in the Temple with shoes.  Since Mexicans have similar looks like Indians his map will instantly see him as an Indian who is arrogant or insensitive or many other words for Indians may come to his mind.  His instant reaction can be very bad to the extent of pushing him out of the Temple.  Imagine if there is no clarification or conversation that happens between the Indian and Mexican, will the Mexican ever visit India again or what new map he will have about Indian culture?  Considering this example if you start observing your Maps you will realize that very often we behave like the Indian who don’t recognize the Mexicans around us.  The Indian could have challenged his Map and said to himself that let me ask why is he wearing shoes instead of concluding that he is arrogant, insensitive etc. and pushing him out of the temple.  Once you start observing your Maps you will build the capacity to observe other people’s Maps and instead of reacting you will come to know from where they are coming.  This will help you build relationships in every conversation.  In the example above the Indian could have possibly worshiped together after explaining him about shoes and asking him to keep them outside.  In fact with his newly formed friendship the Indian could have gone out for lunch together and realized that “Rajma” is same as “Beans” of Mexico and if they continued for few more days they would conclude that everything is a Map and there is nothing wrong or right.  Imagine if we start building all relationships the way the Indian and Mexican are now enjoying being together respecting each others Maps, where will be there any scope for Stress. As you observe your Maps, do share your insights and hope this observation will help you not create new stress in you. 

Second Observation – Automatic Limbic Response: The Limbic System in our brain is based on long term memory and it creates habits that we unconsciously practice.  Let me talk about this with an example.  Imagine the time when you were learning to drive car.  The ABC of Car driving was so tough. ABC is Accelerate, Break, Clutch and the co-ordination between the three was like a big task for first few weeks.  After you got used to the ABC you started driving with the car picking up from every signal without any hiccups or engine stopping.  After a year or so you started even answering phone calls while driving.  Now what had happened is that the Limbic system is working unconsciously and giving directions / responses for driving.  While most people take pride in multi tasking of answering calls and driving at the same time but I will talk about how brain gets stressed out because of that later.   For now let me continue with Limbic System.  The way the Limbic system was giving automatic response for driving it does the same for many other situations.  In one of my coaching assignment my coachee shared that he always had arguments with his spouse on not liking Brown Color shirts.  When I dug deep in his past experiences we found out that in his school days he always dreamed and was waiting to get into college so that he can get away with Brown Color school uniform and wear the dress he likes.  Unfortunately the year he got admission in the college they introduced Brown Color Uniform in college also.  The subconscious mind recorded the hate for Brown Color and even after 20 years of leaving the school and college his automatic Limbic response is that he does not like Brown Color.  In one other assignment the coachee always had disagreements with his boss but got along well with his boss’s boss. We found that he stayed with his grandfather and his father would come only once in few months to meet him.  When his father met once in few months he would ask questions about his studies, marks etc. which he did not like.  So every boss for him was a father who would only ask questions and boss’s boss was like grandfather who he loved to live with. Now in the above two situations the relationship with the spouse and the boss will obviously not go well and create stress.  It is tough but it would be very helpful to keep observing our automatic Limbic responses especially those with which people get annoyed with us and instead of blaming them we can fix our own issues and reduce stress.

Third Observation – Pre-fontal Cortex Response: I mentioned about stress that gets created by too much of multi tasking.  Pre-fontal Cortex is the working memory of our brain.  It helps us process information and take decisions.  Let me talk about Pre-fontal cortex with an example.  It is like the RAM (working memory) of our computer and you must have observed that when we load too many applications either the computer becomes slow or it crashes.  On similar lines if we load our Pre-fontal cortex with too many things for too long it gets exhausted and creates tremendous stress in us.  Hence it is very important for us to take enough sleep.  Also in my previous blog I had talked about keeping intentional blank spaces between meetings and that is to recharge/refresh Pre-fontal cortex.  It also needs glucose to work optimally so eating snacks from time to time helps (avoid cakes/pastries but eat more fruits as fruits release glucose slowly for a longer duration whereas cakes/pastries releases glucose in one shot making the Pre-fontal cortex again starve for glucose). That is one of the reasons why dieting for reducing weight does not work because when we deny food to ourselves for the entire day we exhaust the pre-frontal cortex (no glucose) and when we reach home we completely eat the fridge.  I like the idea at Infosys where they have snacks outlets next to the bus depot so that employees can pick up some snacks before boarding the bus for their long journey providing glucose to Pre-fontal cortex.  So do observe your Pre-fontal cortex and you will see that your irrational decisions are taken when the Pre-fontal cortex is completely exhausted.

Do share your observations as you make the above observations and let’s help each other to reduce our stress levels by creating new maps, changing our automatic Limbic responses and keeping the Pre-fontal cortex free to take stress free rational decisions.

STRESS Unveiled

Stress continues to be an area of concern for many of us.  I thought of sharing my thoughts on how I deal with stress by unveiling each letter of the word STRESS.

S - Silly yourself.  The ability to laugh at yourself on your mistakes can be one of the biggest abilities to manage stress. We then no longer have to defend or justify our point of view especially in situations when we know in our heart that it is our mistake. So we can simply laugh at ourselves and say to others and ourselves "i am so silly...i messed it up...i goofed up...i am very sorry".  That very moment we become free of any further load of continuing with the mistake. There are also other medical benefits like endorphin's are released in our body which is very good for our health. So learn to not only laugh at yourself but LOL at yourself and you will gradually see the current stress going down and very less of new stress building up.

T - Trash the trash of the past. I am not talking about trashing the big baggage of the past but the day to day past. So if you have a difference of opinion with your colleague or your spouse or even your boss on Monday then don't carry that on Tuesday morning. I am not saying that you should not have your point of view and just agree to others views (except your boss) but the disagreement on a particular point should not percolate in subsequent conversations. All new conversation should start new, fresh and lively with no connect with the past.  If we apply this situation with the spouse then after a difference of opinion on a Saturday the conversation on Sunday  should start as fresh and lively as you had when you were dating each other. When we bring that liveliness back in our lives moment by moment there are no resentments, no burden of the past and thereby a stress free present. Don't show this blog to your spouse and ask him/her to implement trashing the past (as usually we are very good at externalizing the problem) but take the responsibility of implementing this yourself first. After few weeks when the spouse says that these days you have become so lively and lovely every moment, you can share this blog.

R - Restrict yourself in getting into a trap of doing things back to back but learn to intentionally keep blank spaces between activities. Jeff Reiner (CEO of Linked in) has beautifully talked about keeping blank spaces between meetings in one of his blogs. Most people take pride in having back to back meetings. When they do that they are not able to think / process what happened in the meeting and spend time on solving the issues. So if the meeting was on an escalation then after few days there is another escalation meeting called  to handle the previous escalation meeting. The vicious cycle of back to back meetings gives a sense of false pride that we are a great busy executive and the life of an busy executive has to be stress full. So try keeping spaces and see how gradually the stress almost disappears for you and people around you (especially your reportees who also keep attending those back to back meetings and join you in the stressful world).

E - Enlarge your heart. People around you at work and home will make mistakes and the ability to forgive and let go by enlarging your heart will help reduce stress. I am not saying that tolerate insincerity or incompetence but enlarge your heart to look at them as people who will learn to deliver. Spend time in training, coaching and mentoring people so that they also find a purpose in their being. Looking at people grow around you will help reduce your stress.

S - Standardize.  There are many repetitive tasks in our lives like buying grocery, paying electricity bills, monthly maintenance, car servicing etc. Try and see if you can standardize those by putting templates, creating a recurring reminder on your laptop, phone so that you don't have to remember them.   My wife has put a post it on our refrigerator and all of us at home write when any item gets over. We just pick the post it while going to the supermarket and don't have to think about what to buy as our short term memory cannot remember the butter that got over last Monday and with the traffic in Bangalore city it can create big stress to go back to buy butter. I also pay advance money when paying electricity bill and automatically the amount keeps getting deducted not needing me to pay electricity bill every month.  I know many people who are very particular about loosing bank interest from advance may not like this but try and look at this as an investment to make more time for yourself and help reduce stress. You can use this extra time to listen music or to nurture your hobbies which by the way can also help reduce stress.

S - Synergize. It is the ability to make 1 + 1 = 11 and not 1 + 1 = 2. It is about unleashing the potential of everybody around us.  When we synergize we get things done by everybody around us and not take the load of doing everything by ourselves.  It means my brain and your brain can create a better solution then only me thinking about an issue.  This also means celebrating differences. Finally it also means synergizing with yourself.  Meditation can be of great help in uniting yourself, creating peace within and dealing with stress. www.sahajayoga.org is a great school of mediation that I have been practicing for last 18 years and you can try that as well.

I am sure there may be many more ways of managing stress and I look forward to your sharing in helping each other deal with stress to lead a lively and loving life....Lets all learn, share and care.

Working with inmates of Tihar Jail

Many of you must have read the recent news that all the inmates of Tihar jail getting released in next 6 months have got 100% placement.  I was thinking, how will it be if I had to work with them as my colleague, reportee or even a boss. Let me be Share the first few thoughts that flashed my mind :

- First one was whether I would be able to have conversations with them the way I have currently with people at workplace

- Will I be able to confront them with an issue the way I do with people with no criminal background

- Will I be able to treat them with same respect or will their background constantly hover in my thinking

- Will I be able to invite them to get together's

- Will my family accept them during such get together's

After an hour or so I got over the above thoughts and said to myself that nobody in this world comes with a plan to do things they did and spend time in jail but it is the circumstances that made them do what they did. If I was born in the environment and circumstances that they were in, I possibly would have done the same.

Once I said this to myself I saw many new thoughts coming to my mind that actually can be of a great advantage to the corporate and let me share them :

- Ability to handle uncertainty.  The uncertainty about the future that they go thru during the trial period cannot be matched to any other uncertainty in this world.  I see many cribbing about uncertainty of jobs, career because the recession which to me now looks very minuscule when I see their uncertainty.

- Visualizing a positive future. After they get sentenced by the court what keeps them alive and ticking while serving the sentence is a visualization of what they will do once they come out of the jail.

- Living in a confined space. The inmates live in a small space that at times is shared by other inmates but in corporate people ask for bigger cabins, bigger cubicles, corner office, window seat and so on. For sure Facilities Management can have a great time with no complaints from them on this front.

- Live life without any variety. I keep hearing in corporate that the food court has only 7 types of cuisines whereas in the jail there may be only 1 type of cuisine with more or less the same gravy / masala (only occassional change of vegetables) both for lunch and dinner and possibly even for breakfast. We may not need any Food Committees any more in corporate who keep changing the cuisines every few months and still not able to satisfy the demands of employees.

- Adherence to time: There is a fix time in jail for each activity including lunch / dinner and the attendance call.  They learn to strictly adhere to time. This can be a great quality that corporate can learn from them as many people take adherence to time in corporate not as seriously.

- Patience: Nobody in the world can have the level of patience they have as all the above qualities cannot be demonstrated without patience.

At the end I would like to say that I look forward to working with a Tihar Jail Inmate and imbibe many of the above qualities from them.

Let me know what thoughts are you having after reading this blog ?

Inside Out or Outside In...

We quite often hear people saying my boss just does not understand where I am coming from, the policies of this company are horrible, it was not this way few years ago...this is “Outside in”. 

Then there are people who would say that I really need to work on myself to get my point across to my boss, the policies of the company needs to be re-looked as we have grown big, we need to change as per times…this is “Inside out”.

Outside in is bringing outside inside us and blaming the outside and inside out is fixing the outside by looking inside and bringing the inside out.

So when I was thinking about why some are outside in and some inside out I thought that 
outside in people look with their eyes and inside out with their hearts. It is said that eyes can see things that are there whereas heart can see what is not there. Sometimes what is there is actually not there and the outside in people pick up many things that is not there like there may not be any issue with the boss or the company policy because if that was the case then why did inside out people did not see that. In fact the outside in people continue to see things that are not there as they will have the same issue with all their earlier bosses and companies or for that matter in most areas of their life. One such outside in person said that I have changed 7 houses as every time I find a lousy neighbor.   

Inside out people become leaders very naturally.  

Some of the qualities of inside out people are :-

• They  don't blame the outside nor the inside (themselves).  They just focus on solving the problems.  
• They have a big heart. Since they always look thru their hearts their heart is always active, healthy and continues to become bigger and bigger. 
• Their eyes are facing inward, looking at the heart and not outside finding faults outside. 
• They imbibe many qualities of what our scriptures say that everything is inside us and all answers to outside can be found inside. 
• They carry the weather inside them so irrespective of whether the weather outside is gloomy or rainy; they always carry a nice sunny weather inside them.

While we all want to be inside out we may become outside in for various reasons and this article can be reminder to see inside us to become inside out.  Do share your thoughts from inside if you found this useful.

There is a limit to every thing...

"There is a limit to everything" is a common statement we hear from many people and even we say this many a times but how true is this and how does this help us or not help us in our lives. 

There are some things that I think should not have any limit like "Compassion" for example.  Just visualize for a second how the world will look like if we there was no limit to compassion.

Second one is "Forgiveness".  Most of us have put a limit on forgiveness and the sad part without we even knowing that it damages us more than the person whom we are not forgiving. So one should not put a  limit on forgiveness. 

Third one is "Knowledge". If one were to not limit age or any other constraint on acquiring knowledge one will continue to evolve and have less time for conflicts, jealousy and many other things that i think should fall under the category "there is a limit to..."

Fourth one is "Innovation". The comforts we enjoy today are because many innovators did not keep any limit on continuing to innovate and make the world a better place.

Fifth one is "Worship". There are many who say work is worship and for them there is no limit to work. However I am referring to the worship to the almighty in any form like meditation, singing, reciting shlokas etc. Those who do not keep a limit on this will see that this also brings in limitless compassion and forgiveness.  Also it opens up the doors for limitless knowledge of one self. 

So besides compassion, forgiveness, knowledge, innovation, worship what else comes to your mind that falls under the category of "there is no limit to..."