How much honesty is enough / needed? = how much authenticity is required for different relationships?
If we are told that being authentic is essential to building trust with others, then how much do we reveal of ourselves while being authentic in our relationships with them.
Here's an interesting Ted Talk on authenticity and leadership from psychopaths.
While the similarities to leadership are intriguing, the speaker raises critical points about how much authenticity is required for us in our relationships.
I've heard this line "You have come from a culture? Well, so does bacteria!"
Culture is the make and break of an organization, no matter how brilliant it's people are. After all culture is defined by the way people work together.
Let's also not forget that anyone who leads a team at any level of the organization also defines the culture for that team. This may not often align completely with the culture of the organization. Hence the possibility of conflict and messiness is very real.
Throughout my HR stint, I worked in various organizations in different industries, including a startup. Each organization had a distinct culture that was driven by those at the top with the most influence on their peers. Some places made it easier for people to work together, others tied up the organization in red tape, and still others had leaders at different levels that made employees ask "who interviewed him / her and what did they see in them that made them select that candidate.
As you can probably tell, leadership and culture has fascinated me for a long time.
Here's a fascinating article that I came across on the things that separate best #workplace#culture from others.
Excerpt - "It's important to note that creating a positive workplace culture is an ongoing process that requires continuous effort and attention. That’s the only thing the best and worst cultures have in common."
Here are a few pics of a workshop on Stress Management that I conducted for my client in the BFSI space.
The participants from the middle and junior levels from different functions of the organization. I am thankful for their whole-hearted participation in the exercises and for their insightful questions during the workshop, which made the entire experience wonderful both for them and for me.
While they identified the causes of stress on their own, I shared with them a guided meditation exercise, and a journaling method both of which they found very useful.
Participant Expectations
Reviewing the Causes of Stress
Journaling
While they built their action play, they also shared on the sticky wall, specific things they will put into practice.
Who do you consider to be a leader worth admiring? By admire I mean that you are so impressed by them (vision, accomplishments, style, etc) that you celebrate them, become their fan and would like to adopt some of their behaviours into your life.
So... Gandhi? Hitler? Churchill? Your neighbourhood businessman? A preacher / priest? A film actor? A family member? A friend? Well, that's your choice.
Now, consider this Ted Talk by Martin Gutmann (the trigger for this short article) that tries to understand this by asking if, by actually celebrating the wrong leaders, we are thereby creating an aspiration to become what might actually be an ineffective leader? If so, what could be the repercussions (on self / team / organization / society) when we celebrate the only shiny (media / social media) side of leadership?
There's a lot of food for thought in this video. For me, one of the most provoking ideas was about what are the measures by which we tend to judge leaders. Or rather, which measures are most appropriate to evaluate leaders?
This further reminded me of discussions I have had during my corporate days while hiring candidates at any level or promoting employees. Practically everyone at the discussion had a different criterion preference when evaluating the person, and it would frequently take us time to understand the other person's perspective when we didn't understand and disagreed with the evaluation.
Things moved forward only when we shared our perspective on the factors we looked at when evaluating the candidate.
And the two final thoughts that struck me from this video:
Is there a leader authentic enough to be worth admiring, particularly when we look at the current behaviours of some of the world's politicians and business leaders?
How do I leverage my strengths to become a leader authentic enough to be admired?
Here are the pics from my recent workshop "Growth Through Conflict Management" for an organization in the BFSI sector.
Due to situational reasons, the start was delayed, so I had to adjust time for some of the activities. Some of the topics covered were the Thomas Kilmann model, Patrick Lencioni's Conflict Continuum and Conflict Circles models, how emotions impact conflict, and the Ladder of Inference. The topics were partly facilitated and covered through self-reflection exercises, facilitator-led discussions, group discussions, and role plays.
The participants were enthusiastic and fully involved in the group discussions, asking me questions wherever they needed to, during the day. Here's how it looked:
Expectations
Strategies for Managing conflict
Qualities of an Effective and Ineffective Listener
Participants summarized what they learnt during the day
Do get in touch with me on +919820155778 or ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com if your teams want to resolve some conflicts and collaborate effectively for success. Or any other topic you have in mind.
This was shared by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) on social media. Gratitude to IAF for the opportunity to run facilitation sessions for Mumbai hub, IAF conference at Delhi and IAF Asia conference at Hyderabad.
Heartfelt thanks to the senior facilitators who spent time giving me feedback on how to improve my session design, particularly, Sekhar Chandrasekhar, Yateen Gharat, Ajit Kamath, Shyam Iyer,Varsha Chitnis.
