How to get a quality answer

Getting answers that are useful means you have to frame the question appropriate to the topic you want to know more about.  Asking quality questions is a topic that doesn't get adequately covered in the education system, while there is an excessive focus on the 'right' answer.. 

Here's an intriguing topic - "Clean Language Interviewing". From the article - "As leaders have significant authority, this is compounded by the “acquiescence effect”, whereby people respond with what they believe the questioner wants to hear."

Read the article here

Change the Way You Listen: Why Leaders Should Stop Hearing and Start Listening

A really practical article that can help you improve your #listeningskills , even if you aren't designated as a #leader 

From this interesting article - "Most speakers average 150-175 words per minute while most listeners can consume 400-500 words per minute. Distracted leaders allow their excess brain capacity to dialogue internally about the conversation and miss meaning by relying only on the words spoken (which account for only seven percent of #communication)."

Click here to read the entire article.

#leadershipskills #managerialskills #interpersonalcommunication #interpersonalskills #relationshipmanagement #strengthsdecoder 

Where Talent can take you...

It's strange how some talented people feel they can get away with any sort of behaviour, just because they contribute a lot.

They seem oblivious to the fact that #talent can take you far, but your behaviour can take you a little more ahead.

How to have candid conversations at work

Most conversations at work are compartmentalized into what I can reveal and what I shouldn't reveal.  This applies to conversations with your team, as well as your boss and peers.  This calls for Confident Vulnerability and can be quite testing and stressful.

From the article: "Transparency goes hand-in-hand with a positive employee experience. #Leaders must make an effort to be accountable to employees and work harder to surface the negative, even if it may be uncomfortable."

Read the rest of the article here

Developing and Sustaining a Culture of Conversation

A thought-provoking article about enabling #conversations in the #workplace.

From the article: "Switching from Slack to Teams or vice versa may streamline processes and access to information, but these are merely tools whose power depends upon the intention and effectiveness of the people using them. Technology platforms can facilitate conversations, but only if people are willing to engage in them."

Read the full article here.

Article - Recognizing Deception - How to Spot a Lie

 Here's an article on something that we wish we could do with some degree of effectiveness on a daily basis - detecting the lies told to us.

It would have been of additional help to me during my corporate days, and it is still useful today.

Here's a hard truth from the article "we’re overconfident in our ability to detect lies."

Read the article here.

And I am NOT! - How to Leverage Your Strengths for Resilience

And I am NOT!

 A seemingly innocuous line, isn't it?

 

This happens to be the last line in the graphic novel, 'Small Gods' by Sir Terry Pratchett. So let's have a little more context.

 

The line is said by the hero to (the character) Death, when he's helping the villain to cross limbo. Death is reminding the hero that the villain was an extremely bad person who hurt and tortured many people, implying that he's undeserving of such assistance. The hero acknowledges this by saying yes the villain did do all those things, and is a bad person, and I am NOT.  And the hero continues to help the villain go across limbo.

 

Since you are human and probably with access to the internet,  it's likely that you have been in a situation where someone at work or home has wronged you (in reality or as perceived by you). You probably had some strong thoughts, particularly about how to get back.  Sometimes, you actually searched and waited for the opportune moment.  Perhaps you made a comment, or refused a request, or just shared the incident with other people.  If you got sympathy from others, you felt vindicated.  As you vented, you probably felt some release and relief.

 

The problem here is that we become comfortable with this state of being because our ego is fed and happy.  It doesn’t really solve the problem, take the relationship forward or help you grow.  The ability to recover quickly from such challenges is going to be stunted.  This, after all, is not what being resilient is about.

 

Now, what if you were to say this line to yourself “And I am NOT!” during or immediately after these times of tense interactions where the need to get back at the other person in a nasty, perhaps damaging way, is particularly strong?

"And I am NOT" reminds me of who I have become, my strengths and weaknesses (and both are ok to have – which makes me OK).  It also empowers me to remember what I have given up in terms of negative behavior, and what I can do with my strengths to be resilient and thrive. 

 

What can you do to build your resilience with your strengths?

1. Know yourself completely. It's hard to attempt anything if you don't know yourself.
2. Accept yourself – the good and bad.  This is called confident vulnerability by DeAnna Murphy, my teacher and strengths mentor from Strengths Strategy Inc /People Acuity Inc.
3. Identify your emotions in the moment.
4. WAIT. Put off any reaction that may be bursting out of your mind and mouth.
5. Understand through some introspection why you are feeling this emotion.  Look for what you can learn from the incident.
6. Leveraging your strengths by strategically choosing to apply them, and deciding on a course of action.
7. Be willing to let go of the need to show yourself as better than the other.
8. Do the action in the most respectful manner you can manage.
9. Be accountable to yourself throughout this process.

Using your strengths is the best way to deal with this situation.  Here's how some of my top 10 strengths (from the CliftonStrengths assessment) work in this tense situation - 

• Intellection to reflect on my actions and the events leading up to the situation
• Analytical to make sense of the different variables that come up.
• Learner to see what I can learn from what has happened so far.
• Ideation, Relator and Individualization to look for ways to rebuild the bridge
• Self Assurance to remind me that I can control myself only and not the other person, and that it's ok if my action plan doesn't give me results.

All these strengths have to work together to give me the outcome that I desire. Yes, this isn't easy, and takes #deliberatepractice. If you are wondering why you should go through all this trouble of using your strengths to build resilience, then think of how such a course of action would positively impact your:

• Relationships (at home and the office)
• Interpersonal Effectiveness
• Decision Making
• Conflict Resolution
• Managing and guiding your team
• Employer Brand
• Personal Brand

 

If all this makes sense to you, then constantly remind yourself of who you are and Who You Are NOT!

Complete the sentence as you see fit - And I am NOT ________________

Want to know more about strategically leveraging your strengths?  Write to me for a discussion on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call me at +919820155778.

What's on your Playlist?

 Ever since i-pods, and then music players came onto our mobile handsets, and then the internet streaming of audio content took off, the word "playlist" became a constant part of our lives and, if we happened to be heavily involved in the music industry, our vocabulary.

We know that a playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop.

We have songs for when we feel good, or feel a little low, or if we want to motivate ourselves (think "Chariots of Fire' theme or Rocky movie theme) and so on. On Podcasts, you have motivational or informational talks.  

There's another playlist that has been with us for a longer time.  This playlist is not just music or podcasts, but consists of conversations. At times, they can consist quotations (said by someone we give importance to) that we are reminded of, according to our circumstances and experiences.  They could be things we have told ourselves.  The psychologists call this 'self-talk'.  I call it the 'Internal Personal Playlist'.  This image shows how it generally works on the inside.

This playlist or 'Internal Representation' comes on automatically as we go through different situations and emotions in life, sometimes defining our behaviours, actions and even our mindsets.  It's never a constant theme, and sometimes, it is extremely hard to switch off.  So we end up more mentally tired than physically tired, and want to withdraw from the world.

Suppose we tried to consciously control the Internal Personal Playlist by choosing what to play?  How might we control this? What might happen?  

For a start, we could acknowledge what is going on around us, and also acknowledge what we are doing in response to the playlist.  We can try to change the playlist.  In the world of Emotional Intelligence, Strengths and Positive Psychology, this means developing deep awareness of what's on our playlist in a given moment.  

The implications of the playlist are many.  But more importantly, what's on your playlist this week? and next month? 

Share your comments on your playlist here

The Relationship between Feedback and Learning

 https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr

An outstanding detailed article on #givingfeedback to your team. Here are two lines that made me think, among others - "Excellence seems to be inextricably and wonderfully intertwined with whoever demonstrates it." and "Focusing people on their shortcomings or gaps doesn’t enable learning. It impairs it."

#cliftonstrengths #strengths #strengthsdecoder #strengthscoaching #feedback #learning #teamcoaching #teammanagement

Pics from my session at IAF India Facilitators Conference 2019

Here are a few pics of participant learning from my session on hashtag#conflictmanagement at the hashtag#iafindia19 hashtag#facilitators Conference in Delhi last week. Thanks to all the participants who enriched it with their experiences. Special thanks to Rajkumar Perumal, Tamanna Naik and Varsha Chitnis for all the support to make the session a success.

Of course, I'd like to also say that this day would have been difficult to reach if not for the wholehearted support I received from Sekhar Chandrasekhar, Yateen Gharat CPF, Ajit Kamath, Varsha Chitnis, Semira Khaleeli and others whose facilitation sessions I've attended and learned from over the past three years. My deepest gratitude to all of you.

IAF 2019 Annual India Conference session - Building a Conflict Competent Organization

Here's a short clip where I talk about my upcoming session at the #iafindia2019 annual India conference.  The topic is Conflict Management and is titled "Into the whirlpool of conflict - Creating a Conflict Competent Organization". I'm really looking forward to it.