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.

Strengths-based Organization @ End of Jobs - Rethinking Work, Talent and the Future

Pic Credit - Canva

Some moons ago, I was asked by Sheena Rajan from SR Global HR solutions if I would give a short talk on Strengths for an HR event she was organization..  The context - it was to a seminar titled "End of Jobs - Rethinking Work,  Talent & the Future".  Panel discussions and other speakers were also scheduled to cover different aspects of the topic.  

I'm India's First Strengths Strategy Coach and have an organization called "The Strengths Decoder". We help my clients leverage their strengths for success at work and in life. Strengths has been consciously been a strong part of my personal and professional life since the past 10 years.  So I readily agreed.  While the title was interesting, the sub-title of the event intrigued me further, and after a short discussion with Sheena, I decided to speak on "Strengths-based Organizations".  I don't really have a clip of my talk to share, so I'll get into a little more detail about the how and what of my presentation.

Why I chose that topic? Organizations face challenges in finding the right talent, engaging them, grooming them and retaining them.  This is happening at all levels.  With AI being used to replace jobs in every function, is it really the end of jobs? What then, is to become of the organization and it's people. Those left behind will definitely be apprehensive (if not unhappy) about the future.  When a person is unhappy at work, particularly if their strengths are not leveraged in their role, they will not be able to deliver optimum results. In fact, no amount of training can improve this performance.  This will negatively impact the growth and existence of the organization, if it doesn't act quickly.

Peter Drucker said "Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at... and yet, a person can perform only from strengths."

If an organization focuses on leveraging the strengths of its employees to achieve it's goals, it will have happier engaged employees who willingly give of their best, are more productive and are likely to stay longer since they see a strong alignment between their strengths (competencies) and the organizations goals / vision.  Of course, leadership buy-in is a must at all levels, and especially at the top.

Why are Strengths-based organizations important? An organization that works on a foundation of strengths tends to be solution - oriented. The employees are happier since they are getting to do what they enjoy doing. We know that happy and engaged employees are a joy to work with, and that improves collaboration along with ensuring that conflicts get resolved more quickly than otherwise.  This impacts the Organization Culture and Employer Brand positively.  Word of this work culture  and brand spreads, in the same way as it happens for organizations that have a toxic culture. This turns the organization that leverages its people's strength into a Key Talent Attractor.

What's in it for the individual employee (at any level)?  Knowing your strengths (what you're good at) and a clear awareness of your weaknesses (which activities drain you), along with knowing your values, will give you opportunities to explore and reject.  Hiring a Strengths-Strategy Coach helps a lot here.

Some stats that I shared during my presentation: Gallup Research has found that individuals and teams that lead with their strengths are:

• 6 times more engaged
• 3 times more likely to report having excellent quality of life
• 8.9% more profitable

It was a pleasure to meet old friends like Nikhil Gadodia and Milind Rane at this event and share the stage with HR stalwarts like Dr. Brillian S.K., Gauri Das, Govind Sharma and others. It was great to make new friends too.   Here are some pics of the action:

Sheena Rajan delivering the Keynote Speech

With Dr Brillian S.K., Gauri Das and Milind Rane

Panel members being felicitated by Sheena Rajan

Curious about finding out and leveraging yours and your employee's strengths? 

Step 1 - Get management buy-in for this systemic intervention.  This is extremely important since theis impact will be seen after a year or so. 

Step 2 - Use a validated psychometric assessment such as CliftonStrengths, PRISM Brainmapping Inventory, OPQ . Hire a Strengths-based Consultant and Coach (hint: me - call +919820155778) to work with you on this.

Step 3 - Be ready to communicate this intervention, and reconfigure your organization processes to incorporate strengths as a philosophy.

Do get in touch with me on +919820155778 or ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com to understand how knowing and applying one's strengths can help one's career and the organization.

Happy Independence Day 2025

 

How to spot fake AI photos

The online world we live in is inundated with fake information, which we consume through articles, videos and photos.  We tend to share such info willingly (for many reasons from fear, protectiveness, and so on) because it triggers strong emotions within us.  

Today, AI is used to generate such content because of ease and quality.  This makes it more difficult to figure out what is real and what is fake.

Click here to view a super video on How to spot fake AI photos 

Do share this with your network.

Conversations that matter

When we are unable to talk about issues that matter, but everything and everyone seems ok, we're on the border of the undiscussables. If we're attentive, we may sense some words not being said, or topics just ignored or parked for later, unnecessarily.

Saying hello to the elephant in the room means acknowledging these realities.

If this is a regular occurance, it means that it's now become a part of the culture.  The organization will have difficulty reaching its goals, and the employees will find it difficult to work together at all levels - a sure recipe for failure. Also, employees will reduce their engagement and top performers will leave sooner rather than later.  The organization will be left with people good at saying 'yes'  and doing the absolute minimum, along with the blame-game and siloed working.

Having worked with a few leadership teams on articulating and transforming their culture, do get in touch with me on +919820155778

Reverse Benchmark?

Photo Credit - Pixabay

In the 80s, 90s and 2000s benchmarking was a big part of organization strategy.  The approach was to copy excellence of the industry leaders and apply them to your own organization. There were mixed results for sure. 

Those who tout the virtues of benchmarking are a kind of copycat.  Most of the time the benchmarking exercise doesn't yield the kind of results that are expected.  That is because of the difference in the key factor - people.  By people I include all levels, particularly the leadership.  While the skills of people from Organization A may be similar to those in organizations that it is trying to benchmark against (even though they are in the same industry), the mindsets will be different, and therefore, the way that variations in methods are applied would be different.   This means that their organizations' cultures would be different. 

This is also the reason why top performers from one organization don't always do as well in another organization they move to, even though the industry and business is the same.

Even if there are positive results, they don't really do much to make the organization stand out i.e. distinguish itself from it's competition.  Customers are not going to be in a hurry to come to you if you are offering services or products that are commoditized.

pexels-maksgelatin-4412924

In the current adoption of AI scenario, we see similar attempts to incorporate AI into the organization without sufficient thought (beyond costs) of the possibilities and probabilities of long-term multiple -layer benefits.  This will eventually lead to the feeling of sameness.  Today, some of us are able to tell when a document (email / report / presentation) has been written by AI.

What might happen if the organization were to reverse benchmark?  Have a look at the short clip  that inspired this short piece.

Definitely food for thought for me- please share yours.

Perhaps this Reverse Benchmarking might help us make better choices when choosing how to apply AI at work or in our lives.

Over half of leaders regret replacing people with AI: Will you be next?

Photo by Vojtech Okenka: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photograph-of-chocolate-cupcake-with-red-strawberry-toppings-1055272/

There's a rush by organizations to incorporate AI in the workplace processes, and also a rush for candidates to gain AI skills through various courses.
However, there are timew when it's felt that they should have taken more time to consider factors, including the future before taking the decision.

For eg., I wonder if those rushing to learn MLL, have considered that one day, they might be made redundant by AI systems that they have created.

Here's a thought-provoking article on why there are regrets for replacing people with #AI.

From the article: "your competitors will buy AI technologies similar to, or better than, those you are using to replace your people. Any first-mover advantage will be quickly lost.".

Read the entire article here