How I realized I made a positive impact with my workshop

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This happened to me during a recent series of Leadership Development workshops with a client, and a participant informed me that another participant would reach 30 minutes late because it was their birthday, though the company policy permitted them to stay home and celebrate with family.  Let me also mention that all the participants held work experience of 15 years to 22 years.

In my workshops over the years, I have always had participants come to me at the end of the workshop thanking me for helping them get their insights or results. This workshop too was no exception. 

But I was quite blown away by this revelation, more so, because the participant also offered me chocolates during the break and mentioned that they attended the workshop today because of me.

This gives me much confidence as a trainer and facilitator, since it tells me my workshop design met their learning needs, and my delivery approach made them want to attend the next session, even though they had a choice to take the day off.

I am extremely grateful to my mentors, clients and participants and the International Association of Facilitators who have been with me on this journey and provided these opportunities for me to perform, learn and grow.

When appreciation is received

 

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

Gratitude in 2022

 

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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.

The Assist

The world cup is just finished. There were 172 goals scored at the 2022 World Cup, a new all-time competition record, surpassing the 171 scored in both 1998 and 2014.  Lionel Messi has been directly involved in 21 goals at the World Cup for Argentina (13 goals, eight assists), the outright most of any player for any nation at the finals on record (since 1966). For the source of these numbers, go here.

From the above sentence, "Involved in" means assisted indirectly in the scoring of the goal. Here's what it looks like on the football field. 

The art of assisting does not get its sufficient credit in football. Now though, with video tech and analytics, fans are beginning to identify how vital these second-last passes can be and the skill it takes to thread a ball by breaking defensive lines.  

Similarly, in our regular lives, we sometimes tend to forget that we got to where we are because of the assists of particular people.  I'm not just talking about the cheerleaders, but also the ones who challenged us rudely, rejected our views and ideas or just created roadblocks for us where none were expected.  These negative assists really made us UP our game, and have also played a key role in bringing us where we are by getting us to use our strengths knowingly, as well as differently.

So as  2022, draws to a close, I thought it important to thank all those who assisted me, both positively and negatively in my journey.  You may wish to do the same.

Have a great 2023.

A Thankful 2021

 Here are some of the things (in no particular order) that I am thankful and grateful for in 2021:

• A chance to go on a short vacation with my family.
• An overall healthy life through the year for me, my family and friends.
• The opportunity to go on a residential Facilitation Skills Training Program.
• The many career coaching and resume /interview coaching clients who signed up with me.
• The chance to sing in my choir for Christmas (I probably missed this the most since Apr 2020).
• My IAF colleague Varsha Chitnis for the opportunity to work on a long term senior leadership  intervention, that helped me use another assessment tool from the PRISM Brainmapping Inventory toolkit.
• The time to read 54 books this calendar year - a mix of fiction and non-fiction.
• My IAF fraternity, who gave me the chance to give of my time to Facilitation week by designing and delivering facilitated sessions on topics like Resilient Leadership and Difficult Conversations..
• The opportunity to be a part of the marketing team at the online IAF Facilitation Summit.
• The time to write 4 articles this year on topics like Resilience, Emotions, Job Descriptions and Goals. 
• My social media followers who have read and shared my articles, posts and other responses on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
• My friends who helped me record and release a few videos for my business.
• My mentor Sekhar Chandrasekhar, who generously gave me some of his favourite books.

FINALLY - 

• To all the errors I made, and the things that didn't go my way - thank you for the opportunity to reflect, learn and do better.  I hope I meet some new friends of yours in 2022, and I hope they will as kind (if not kinder) as you.