Never Grow Up Podcast - my views on Strengths, Performance and Culture

Happy to be invited to this podcast hosted by #nevergrowup where I shared my thoughts about #strengthsatwork #strengthsbased #performance #teamperformance #teameffectiveness and #culture, along with #recruiting people.

Do let me know what you think.

Happy Independence Day 2026

 To all my fellow Indians...

Make Anger Your Ally

So it's (Mon)day - EOD, and things haven't exactly gone your way. You feel perturbed, miffed, maybe aggravated (All of the above?). This matters more if you lead a team than if you are an individual contributor.

Here's a fascinating article on what you can do about the anger you feel at any time... make Anger your Ally. 

Read on... and share your thoughts about how you manage your #anger.

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Facilitation Meets Fatherhood

 I was asked by the International Association of Facilitators', India Chapter to give a quote for Father's Day, Facilitation and Fatherhood.

Here's what came to my mind. 

What do you think?

The Hidden Reality of Performance Ratings

The existence of a performance appraisal process is to "to improve employee performance and ultimately enhance organizational effectiveness."

As part of the Performance Appraisal process, managers and leaders are asked to evaluate the team member's performance and rate individual performance across a rating scale of Poor to Excellent Performance.  Most organizations use the ratings to decide how to reward or punish the employees. Here's the reality (Unpopular Thought No. 1):

All ratings are biased and not indicative of reality, but of a situation  (partly due to bias) during a particular point in time.  It doesn't matter if there is a numerical value attached to the rating. Leaders are consciously or unconsciously aware of this.

Sadly, in some industries, the appraisal is considered to be a guarantee of an increment and / or a promotion, but not about development, which is the whole point, since the organization would benefit along with the individual.

During my HR career, I found managers and leaders who delight in being very strict in their assessments and ratings, and those who were lenient in their ratings. So of course, these extreme ratings tend to reviewed by HR and Senior Management in most organizations.

For the lenient assessors i.e. those who give their team members a high rating, I would ask them when these highly rated team members would be ready to take over their role.  The response I got was an immediate 'no', along with the words "not so soon" and a list of the employee's faults. They didn't really have a transition plan (or knew how to make one) for the team member's growth.  This of course, doesn't help the team member or the organization.

For those strict assessors, I would ask them to review if the lowest rating was really applicable. The were also questions about the support provided to help the employee improve.  The rating however did not always change.  A Performance Improvement Plan was sometimes put in place, but most times, it didn't help the employee to positively shift performance.  Lots of issues in this aspect due to how a PIP and the appraisal process is perceived

Consider this scenario where managers / leaders rate their team members low or very low, and rate themselves very high or at the highest rating.  Here's Unpopular Thought No. 2:

Low ratings indicate that the goals of the department or function are not met.  Therefore, there is zero basis on which they can rate themselves high. Secondly, if the team ratings are low but the manager's ratings are high, then it's clear that the manager has not been attending to the critical role of grooming team members and enabling team member's performance. This becomes a failure of the manager / leader in achieving their goals and disqualifies them from the highest possible rating.

This situation can happen mainly when "people / team management" is not mentioned or clearly articulated in the goalsheet / KPIs.  Some organizations that face many resignations, so they include an attrition "target" in manager's and leaders's goalsheets, but not much else.

For those thinking, that "HR hired these guys and I had no choice in their selection", please remember that this is a systemic problem related to the organization's process, where you as leader / manager have an absolute right to take a stand against something that hampers your teams productivity - so speak up and block your time appropriately to become a part of the hiring process.

If this article, raised a thought or two within you, connect with me on +919820155778 for a discussion or for workshops on Performance Management Systems, Making Feedback Effective, The Selection Discussion, and other topics that will help your organization to effectively navigate it's way to its goals.

Empty Your Head - Letting Go of....

From the article: "A Zen master says, “Life is like a river.” His students respond, “We don’t get that. How can life be like a river?”

“Okay,” the master says, “life is not like a river.”"

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As I read through it, I realized the necessity of reviewing, updating and even letting go of one's own knowledge, experiences and #beliefs that have been meticulously gathered and cherished over the years, in order to reach a level of mastery that is comfortable with "not knowing" and deliver superior performance. I feel this is critical for leaders especially in today's volatile environment.

Love to have thoughts and reactions to the article. You can find it here.

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Effective Decision Making Skills for Career and Life for TakeCharge

I like helping people, especially undergrads and grads in finding their career based on their strengths.  Having 20 years HR experience from seven different industries, I've seen first hand the "unforced" errors made by candidates who I interviewed.  Not all were junior, first time interviewees.  I felt it was quite sad that they made these errors because they didn't know better. So, ever since I started out on my entrepreneurial journey, I ensured that Strengths-based Career Coaching and Career Transition Coaching were a part of my service offerings.  

I joined Take Charge about three years ago as a Mentor, to give back and help the youth.  Click here to read more about Take Charge

During a discussion with the organizing team at Take Charge, it came out that the mentees were requesting some training on topics like convincing others (Influencing), making career and life choices, and dealing with disagreements. We know that we're drowning in information, and making decisions would be more challenging for those who younger, even though they navigate the digital world better than us more experienced folks.  

I offered to do a pro-bono session on Decision-Making for them, because when one is clear about how they arrived at a decision, it becomes easier to convince others, even there is an atmosphere of disagreement.  I had the experience of having conducted two-day workshops on this topic for corporates.

My challenge here - I was given two and half hours (woefully insufficient).  I really had to slash and squeeze the content (with exercises) into that timeframe.  I designed a workbook with articles. interactive exercises, group discussions around assumptions, and made them work with a couple of decision making models.

The big plus - everyone that turned up put their heart and soul in participating in the sessions.  That made the session much more stronger than it would have been.  Here are some pics of the action:

Expectations

Their Icebreaking Questions

 

Icebreaking in progress

Sharing key points from Group Discussions

Their Insights and Actions

Participant Feedback

WordCloud for the best part of the Workshop

Post Script - Another workshop is being organized in the near future to cover other key content under this topic that was included in this session.

Stay Tuned.