When appreciation is received

 

I'm just grateful for the opportunity to contribute to an organization like the International Association of Facilitators.

Participant Action and Feedback - Managerial Effectiveness for First Time Managers

I recently got to design and deliver one of my favourite workshop topics "Managerial Effectiveness for First Time Managers" for recently promoted employees for a financial institution.

This was a two day workshop, with a followup plan.  The participants were energetic and full of questions - as they agreed to as part of the Ways of Working they created at the start of the workshop.  I loved the way in which they participated in all the discussions and facilitation processes.

For me, I did my best to incorporate different facilitation processes (and an Improv exercise) into the design for both days, and didn't use a PowerPoint Presentation (much to participants surprise).  Here's some of the action from the two days.

The participant learning expectations which they wanted to apply immediately after the workshop

Sorting out the competencies of the leader

After a detailed discussion, the competencies of a leader, as they defined and understood it.

What they picked up from Day 1

And here's the overall learning from two days.

I'm thankful to Mr. Rajesh Almeida, Head - HR, for the opportunity to work on this assignment, design  the session and his team who supported me during the workshop.

I'm looking forward to more such assignments with those organizations that want to build their leadership pipeline.  Please connect with me on ryanbbbarretto@hotmail.com or +919820155778 to schedule a discussion.

Answering - Where do you see yourself in Five Years?

How to respond to the interview question - Where do you see yourself in Five Years?

It has been one of the most regularly asked interview questions for a very long time (and now outdated) ,so now it's quite ineffective for an interviewer to expect to make an informed hiring choice with this question.

Why? You might ask? 

You might even say - it shows me how the candidate plans for his future. In a linear world, this could be true. However, this is a valid but somewhat insufficient thought.  Terry Pratchett (one of my favourite authors), said it better than I could:

A similar thought was echoed by the creators of the Scrum Methodology.  You can find it in the Scrum Fieldbook.

What if the candidate asks you what your organization is doing to ensure that it will be around for the next five years?

Of course you can plan the future, you might say.

Reality says - sure, give it your best shot.  Show me the crystal ball you are using, and I will show you what happens when the time comes.

The point is - The world we live in is in constant flux, at a high speed, pulling and tempting us in multiple directions at once.  Changes in technology are happening so fast that yesterday's knowledge gets redundant faster.  What's worse, some of the things we once considered true and sacrosanct are now found to be inaccurate.

Another thing - we tend to base our plans on our past experiences.  While that's a fairly normal practice, that's extremely effective in a linear world, we don't realize that those past experiences occurred due to a multitude of factors, including situational factors beyond our control, our own stage of growth and maturity, and our reactions at that time.  This means that for our plans to be successful, we need to have the same set of factors occurring in the same degree, and we have to take those same steps.  This likelihood is really low.

Now, let's examine this question from the perspective of:

A Candidate, what could be a suitable response to this question?  Here's my suggestion - 

"I'm building my strengths and skills by undertaking diverse experiences and learning from them.  I supplement this with networking for knowledge, and working with a mentor.

I see myself applying my strengths in my future role of influencing or managing people to deliver great results in my chosen field of expertise for the organization, either mine or my employer's, leveraging suitable opportunities that come my way."

Please feel free modify the above so that it suits you, your profile  AND sounds like you, and not someone else.

I cover this and other aspects in my Interview Coaching sessions with both junior and senior clients.

An interviewer - my suggestion would be to modify the question as follows: 

"As you move ahead in your career, what do you see yourself doing five years from now?"

This could be followed up by - "What have you been doing so far to make this a reality?"

This helps move the interview into a detailed conversation where the candidate gets to share deeper information about themselves and you get more clarity on the candidate's potential capability.

I cover this and other aspects of Behavioural Event Interviewing in my specially designed workshop for organizations,  "The Selection Discussion".

Want support to know more? Write to me on +919820155778 or call +919820155778 to schedule a discussion.

Books I read in 2022

 

Screenshot from my Goodreads.com profile

In 2022, I wasn't able to complete my reading goal of 50 books.  I finished 41 books, somewhere close to 10000 pages (9885 in case you wanted to know how close).  

This doesn't include articles and social media posts on all mediums.

You can go here to see which ones they are.  Yes they are a mix of fiction and non-fiction.  For me, this is a must, cos I know I've learned a lot from fiction books, especially from the great P.G. Wodehouse whose insights into the "Psychology of the Individual" helped kindled my interest in people behaviour all those years ago.

My favourite of the year - is very hard to choose.  So let me say this: My life is better for having read all these books.

I haven't yet decided what the reading goal for the current year should be, but I'm thinking perhaps the same goal of 50 books? For context, I completed 54 books in 2021 against a goal of 50 books.

What do you think?

Happy New 2023

 What if we based our New Year or any Resolution upon our Strengths instead of our Weaknesses?

Gratitude in 2022

 

pexels-joni-lorraine-10266233

Here's my list of things I'm grateful for, that happened in 2022.

• My family for their support
• My friend and colleague Varsha Chitnis for getting me to work with very interesting OD assignments.
• My mentor Sekhar Chandrasekhar whose numerous conversations and recommendations enrich me and my work.
• My clients (coaching and training) who hired me for interesting assignments through the year.
• My IAF fraternity, who once again gave me the chance to give of my time to Facilitation week by designing and delivering a facilitated session on Microaggression.
• To Chandan Roy Choudhary and Amitava Pal who mentored me to complete my ACC from ICF, along with a set of other friends and well-wishers who encouraged me to complete the ACC.
• The participants of my workshops, both online and offline, who made those workshops a success by sharing their comments and questions.
• To DeAnna Murphy who encourages me to take my study of Strengths deeper with the Strengths Multiplier Assessment and the opportunity to facilitate this topic.
• The time to read 41 books this calendar year - a mix of fiction and non-fiction.
• My social media followers who have read and shared my articles, posts and other responses on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
• My errors - for all the learning opportunities for improvement that you gave me. I would love to meet new friends of yours in 2023.  In case I missed some of you, please greet me gently in 2023.
• My friends, both personal and professional, who made the year less bumpy with their conversations that were filled with words of encouragement and straightforward feedback.