Happy New Year 2026

 

My wish for your New 2026 for you and your loved ones

Generative AI for business Leaders

 

Here's a lucid article on how #leaders can leverage #AI to make a difference to their organization's growth along with the skills of it's people.

From the article - "Leaders who take proactive steps to amplify #humanskills will future-proof their workforce, unlock new levels of innovation, engagement, and competitive advantage, and ensure that AI enhances, rather than replaces, their greatest asset: people."

Click here to read the article.

Pic credit pexels-shvetsa-5614124

Christmas Greetings 2025

 

Learnings from Stress Management Training

 The next step in the Leadership journey for this client's leaders focused on managing their stress levels.

In the world we currently have, and with AI speeding things up and creating all sorts of FOMO with people at all levels, it's really difficult to control external sources or causes of stress.  With this understanding, I designed a one day workshop that combined aspects such as EQ basics, Time Management, along with tools for 

• Mindful stress management and 
• Journaling for Gratitude 

These would allow participants to manage their own reactions to external situations, and keep their stress levels lower.

Here are pics from the session  that was held in person.

Expectations

Their understanding of "Living In the Present"

Causes of Stress in their context

Learnings that they will action

From the hybrid batch, here's what came up for the participants.

I had a wonderful time doing the sessions.  Do get in touch on+91+9820155778 if you would like me to conduct similar workshops for your organization.

Why IAF conferences are in my blood - IAFIndia2025

From the Woven Garden Session conducted by Kala Diwanji, Varsha Chitnis and myself

 It's the experience.

This "experience" is made up of:

• Fun
• Learning
• Building new Relationships
• Nurturing old relationships

I've been attending them since 2015, barring a couple of years where other things in life asserted (and inserted) themselves to take precedence over the conference.  I've also volunteered for some of the conferences, on specific teams like the Proposal Team or the Registration Team.  I have also had the good fortune to be able to present a Facilitation Process (jointly) at two IAF India conferences (2019 & 2025) and the IAF Asia Conference in 2023.  All these have added to my experience in such a manner that I always feel "Yeh Dil Mange More".  So I had taken up the role of Co-lead for Mumbai hub from 2018 to 2020.

Here are memories of past conferences with some of my co-facilitators with whom I had a blast both designing the session and running it.

With Kala Diwanji and Varsha Chitnis at IAF India Conference Pune 2025

With Hideyuki Yoshioka and Varsha Chitnis at IAF Asia Conference in Hyderabad 2023

By the way, we were facilitating Large Groups (Hyderabad had approx. 200 and Pune had about 80 participants) for both the above sessions.

As a volunteer for IAF, you can add the term "community bonding" to the list mentioned above.  For me this is critical because volunteering creates the "belonging"  feeling that leads to us all bonding as a community.

In the #IAF2025 conference too, the challenge is which sessions to attend.  Unlike other non-IAF conferences where we wait for gyan from speakers, here at IAF conferences, we create the gyan ourselves thanks to the superb facilitation processes run by the Facilitators whose sessions are diligently managed by the Proposal Team, and evaluated by CPFs.

We rekindle old friendships and make some new ones.

We add to our basket of facilitation tools, not just during the conference, but even later where we can call those facilitators to clarify and gain more insights into their processes.

I enjoyed all the sessions I attended at IAFIndia2025, but the ones that stood out for me are:

Ravi Bhaviskar - Re-live Impact Story of Empowering Barefoot and Brilliant Girls

Ravi Bhaviskar's Facilitation Impact story showcasing how he used facilitation to enable the #barefoot and brilliant girls to dream big.   He even ran the process he used with the girls for us to get the experience of what he had done for them.

Zoom to read those stickers

Anand Mehta's wonderfully immersive process on Gratitude and Healing.

Ajit Kamath in Action

Ajit Kamath's masterclass on the IAF Competencies - done through facilitation processes.

Group pic of our Large Group session on 14 Nov 2025

Grateful thanks to IAFIndia, the core team, volunteers, session buddies and student volunteers, not forgetting our sponsors for making sure that we have a fabulous experience.  I'm eagerly looking forward to the next conference.

Action from workshop on Effective Performance Feedback

Source: Pinterest

The image is, for me, clearly descriptive of what Effective Feedback is about.

We know that "Feedback is considered the breakfast of champions".  We also know that it is essential to our growth, sometimes our survival too.

Fortunately or unfortunately, most people think that feedback is for someone else (not for them) to accept and action.  Giving feedback effectively is also difficult since most leaders and managers also are not formally trained to do this.  They tell their people told to "do better", "take to the next level", "kuch accha karo" and not surprisingly, the performance barely improves, leaving everyone frustrated.

When I put this workshop design together, I made sure that I included certain key topics like Bias Awareness, in addition to Feedback Models and role plays to allow participants to put learning into practice.  

This is part of the Leadership Journey Program for an organization that I have been involved in since September 2025.  

Expectations

What makes Feedback Effective and Ineffective

Putting Individual Learning into action

These are from the Hybrid session on the same topic.

Do get in touch with me on +919820155778 or ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com if you would like to improve your team's performance by equipping the leaders and managers in Making Feedback Effective.

And yes, the cover image of this post was used in the workshop.

Why I attend IAF conferences

 

I was asked why I attend IAF Conferences, since I've attended most of them since 2015.

Click this link to know the details.

Facilitating at the 9th IAF India Annual Conference 2025

 Happy to announce that

This will be:

• The second time I am co-facilitating a large group,
• The third time overall, that I am co-facilitating at the IAF Conference.
• The 8th IAF conference I am attending

This time I am co-facilitating with Kala Diwanji (of 60Bits Consulting) and Varsha Chitnis (of Innovision People Development Consultants Pvt. Ltd).  It's been an absolute pleasure working with them to design the session

It's gonna be fun and learning (my favorite combination).  The friends and relationships we make are a major bonus.

If you are keen on attending the conference (it's being held in Pune this year and few tickets are left) and experiencing the facilitation sessions run by myself and others (there's lots of topics being covered), do register at this link.

Register for the Conference: https://lnkd.in/gUiSz8ZJ

Happy Diwali 2025

 

Workshop Scenes from "Leader as a Coach"

This is what happened during the first workshop of another Leadership Journey series from a client who wanted me back as their trainer / facilitator.  I was thrilled that I was called again to train this enthusiastic group.

In the context of these learners, coaching for performance was the area of focus,  We spent a lot of time on understanding what coaching is, how it differs from mentoring and the kind of impact it has on the people being coached, especially in terms of creating ownership to improve performance, as well as the power of different types of questions.  Participants also went through a deep discussion exploring the Competencies of a Coach as detailed by the International Coaching Federation.

Expectations 

Graphical Depiction of each ICF competency

Insights from the workshop

What participants would put into practice

The second batch was a hybrid group with some participants attending remotely.  Hybrid sessions tend to be challenging, but thanks to the participants, it went off well.

Insights and Action Plans

Do connect with me on +919820155778 if you want your leaders to develop coaching as a skill to drive enhanced performance.

How Datafication Damages Trust

We see a lot of posts about the importance of #analytics #data and #datadrivendecisionmaking along the expressed need to be #rational while making #decisions.  This is necessary to reduce (one can't eliminate) the role of emotions and bias.

Here's an article that talks about the fallout with employees when you reduce people to a number. Why this is important when #AI is here?

From the article - "They can bring unexpected and often subtle disruptions to established relationships and ways of working, causing people to question if their employer truly has their best interests at heart and often significantly undermining employee #trust in the organization."

The loss of trust is possibly of greater long term damage to the organization.  Why? Your organization still runs on people.  People deliver superior performance when they trust the leadership and management. Work moves faster and productivity improves in a culture of trust because there's less time spent on doubts.  It's not that there will be zero conflicts and disagreements, but a team that trusts each other will solve their disagreements faster and be more productive.

Read the rest of the article here.

Pic credit - Pixels

Battling burnout: Resilience can’t fix a toxic workplace

When I am asked to conduct #stressmanagement workshops, it's always about getting participants to deal with #stress, rather than addressing the #rootcauses of the stress in the system. It is a strange approach that would not provide effective long-lasting results because while #eustress can aid performance, #distress would hamper it.

Most people don't realize the role of emotional intelligence in managing stress, which is why I include  it in my workshop design.  Also, the irony is that a leader, manager or process could actually be causing the stress in the first place.

Here's an interesting article on why attempting to build #resilience in the organization may promote #toxic behaviours and enhance the toxicity in the #organizationculture, and increasing the stress of all employees, causing burnout and other issues.

From the article - "By solely relying on resilience training, HR leaders risk inadvertently perpetuating a cycle of #burnout, masking the need for true cultural change"

Read the article here.

Leadership Lessons from the Desert

Nature always has a lot to teach us, only if we are willing to pay attention.  

Here's an interesting article about what leaders can learn and apply from nature, in this particular case, the desert.

From the article - "When we strip away the noise, we can lead with greater focus, integrity, and wisdom."

Read the article here.

Motivation at the Workplace - Maybe We Missed Something?

Source: Canva AI

The word 'motivation' has always given me a bit of discomfort.  I can't say why exactly.  Maybe it was the idea of motivating other people that made me think of people who have a high need for control (who I don't really like).

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I came across this quote on #motivation, and it reminded me that in the corporate world, it seems we are not on course when it comes to "motivation practices" particularly since the incentives and bonuses that are used to generate (motivate?) an increase in #performance are short-lived and ineffective.  For eg. Sales Incentives tend to be revised  / increased every quarter, particularly in sales-driven organizations, which, along with the time spent in redesigning and cascading these incentives, adds to the organization's costs with not much corresponding increase in performance. I realized that the top performers will continue to be at the top of the game, because of how they apply their natural talents and adapt to situations.  But even they need time to adjust to the culture and start delivering performance when they move to competitor organizations.  "Hit the ground running" seems to be a meaningless term that indicates more of "wishful thinking" rather than anything realistic.

Source: Pixels

Performance Improvement Plans (PIP) rarely improve the employee's performance, though it mostly has the effect of demoralizing said employee and prompting them to move out of the organization because PIP is considered as the need for fixing and therefore a stigma of sorts - leading to another loss that in turn leads to more costs.  I'm not referring to wrong hires here, but if you think about it, this increases the organization's costs as well.

What managers and leaders (all functions) refuse to accept is that the carrot gets digested and the stick withers over a short time. - Ryan Barretto (That's me)

My own exploration to understand this topic took me to many theories, starting with Abraham Maslow's work, Herzberg's two-factor theory, and others.  I then came across the work by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, which, given my background in strengths, really made me stop and think if we're getting motivation wrong in the corporate world.

Self-determination theory (by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci) emphasizes instead the importance of fostering intrinsic motivation through satisfying these specific core needs. It suggests that all humans have three basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—that underlie growth and development. 

• Autonomy means that the employee has some freedom of choice in his work (not the "take it or leave it" sort that exists in many organizations). 
• Competence is about whether the employee can do the work required and deliver adequate results
• Relatedness is about the feeling of connectedness and sense of belonging that the employee has with others.

In my experience, the main key is to help the employees uncover the #alignment of their #strengths to the #goals of the organization, which has the benefit of positively impacting the #employeeengagement and #employerbrand. This transcends working for more than just a paycheck. - (Also me.)

For each of the above three areas, it is the Reporting Manager that bears the major amount of responsibility, because of the frequency of contact they have with their team members.  Let's keep in mind:

1. When a manager or leader micromanages a competent employee, that creates uneasiness and over time, frustration, because the employee feels shackled while doing his work. The only thing worse than this is to be micromanaged by someone who knows far less about the job than you. In some cases, a totally hands-off approach would not be effective especially if the employee is new to the role, which would also lead to frustration again.  So a balance is required in getting work done from others.  The #situationalleadership model provides great insight on this.
2. The Manager / HR / Leader has to clearly articulate and define the level of competence required for the role, and hire accordingly. If this is missing, it can create additional ambiguity for everyone concerned, and it might result in everyone trying to do everything and do everything.
3. Additionally, if the manager doesn't spend much time conveying the importance and relevance of the employee's role to the organization's goals and vision, it creates apathy and casualness in behaviour from the employee.  This again negatively impacts performance.

HR also bears a joint responsibility and should support the manager / HOD by being flexible about job descriptions and jointly defining KRAs and KPIs.

Here are some practical ways to Increase Intrinsic Motivation (IIM)-

This is most effective when jointly addressed by HR and the Function Heads.  Firstly, all employees at all levels should have a deep awareness of their strengths.  Next, based on what we now know from applied neuroscience, leaders can intrinsically motivate themselves or their teams—and coaches can help their clients increase their sense of intrinsic motivation—by exploring these three tactics:

1) Increase a sense of autonomy

Explore any perspectives where they see their work, project or task as being forced upon them. Then, help them to choose a more motivating perspective. Based on the leader's / manager's / HR understanding of their strengths, reflect on:

• What do they have control over? What could they be given control of over a period of time?
• What should they never be given control of? 
• How could they approach the work in their own way?

2) Include Mastery Goals that stimulate their sense of being positively challenged

A Mastery Goal is a goal that challenges the employee to think about making a positive attempt to achieve a goal, even when they know it is something newer and/or larger for them to achieve than they normally would. Of course, it's the manager's job to ensure that it doesn't #burnout their people.  This would enable them to deliver performance that would be more than what they otherwise might have done. Stimulate their sense of intrinsic motivation by asking:

• What interests them?
• What skills or knowledge could they improve upon or attain that's aligned with their strengths?
• How do they wish to grow in their work and capabilities?
• What would make the task at hand feel like less of a chore and more of a positive challenge or chance to explore and accomplish something new?
• What organizational support would they need to achieve those new stretch goals?

3) Bring meaning into their work

Ask questions that connect leaders to a deeper personal purpose:

• What values come into play here? For example, how does their work or task align with their core values? What values could they draw on to help feel more aligned with their work or with a team or project? What values-based goals could they set?
• Also, what makes their work feel purposeful? What is important in it? What might the work result in? Whom might it help in a broader societal sense?
• What makes their work or a project feel fulfilling? How is it a part of their bigger vision?
• What will enhance their sense of connection—to the team, to a higher purpose, to the people they serve?

Now you may think, this is all fine, but what about an employee's motivations? What motivates an employee in the first place? For that you could use the framework of David Maclelland which speaks of the a person's need for Affiliation, Power and Achievement.

Of course, the culture of the organization also plays a huge role in influencing the motivation of the employees at all levels. Check out the Three Factor Theory of Sirota that highlights the importance of Fairness / Equity, Achievement and camaraderie in motivating employees.

As you can see, there are many paths to motivation, and a blend seems most appropriate.  However - 

The manner in which the leaders motivate their people or enable their people's motivation plays a huge part in the perception of the culture of the organization, the engagement levels of people and whether it would be a #greatplacetowork.

Want to have a discussion around motivating your team?  Write to me at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call on +919820155778 and we'll fix a mutually convenient time.

Action from FDP session - Mindfulness and Emotional Resilience

 I was thrilled to be invited to be a part of the Faculty Development Program of Anjuman College of Hotel and Tourism Management Studies and Research.  This program is spread over a week and has other external faculty like myself, who are covering different aspects of the theme "Wellness to Wisdom".

All the faculty invited for this Program

I opted for the topic, Mindfulness and Emotional Resilience for Educators.  The challenge - only two and a half hours to cover such a fascinating and deep topic.  I had a further discussion to understand how this topic came up, and based on this, I put the components of my session together.

Through facilitator led discussions, I covered how emotions can create distortion of reality and facts, what emotional resilience contains, the difference that a Growth Mindset can make, the fallacy of multi-tasking and it's links to stress and productivity, mindfulness and got them to practice a mindfulness journaling exercise.  

The faculty participants marvelously did their part of being student learners, with insightful questions and comments.  They made the session more interesting and impactful, especially when they took up a specific action to put into practice.

                                          

Practical Expectations Captured

Key Insight and one Action

Dr. Harish Suvarna, the Principal presents me a memento on behalf of the organization

My gratitude to the Principal, Mr. Harish Suvarna, the faculty and particularly Ms. Priyanka Kandalkar for the warm hospitality they provided to me throughout my time there.  I wish them all the best, and look forward to working with them again in future.

Do connect with me on +919820155778 if you want your people to experience such topics.