Problem connecting with a group of people? Try 'TALK'

My friend Pradeep is a hard working soul. You tell him the work and consider it done. He has earned a reputation of ‘Mr. Dependable’ among his friends, peers and seniors. When talking one on one he is damn impressive. The way he speaks, the variety of information he shares gives the impression that he is quite well read. It leaves the person dialoguing with him with an enriched feeling.

 

However Pradeep faces one peculiar challenge. He finds it difficult to socialise. When with a group of friends or peers he finds it difficult to connect and carry on the conversation. We find a completely changed Pradeep compared to what one sees him while interacting one on one.  

What do you think is not working for him? Can he find a workable solution to this issue?

 

While chatting up with Pradeep he shared with me that he did find a solution to this problem and is in the process of implementing something that he calls the ‘TALK’ formula.

 

I wondered what a formula has to do with connecting with a bunch of people around him.

 

He has defined ‘TALK’ as Technology; Allied interest; Lifestyle and Know-how.  

He says while in a group who says that I have to talk?  To connect with people one can make them speak. And ‘TALK’ helps him do that.  

 

What he does is askes open ended questions around ‘TALK’ and bingo the group is on with the discussion. 

He gives an example of it. The other day he says, I was having lunch with my office mates. I just asked the question around ‘Technology’ the first alphabet of TALK.  Which is the latest mobile these days? And the group started discussing the makes, ease, operating system, processing speed, design, cost etc. Some other time he wanted to check on cars and he had a similar experience.  

Similarly he says that you discover a whole new world when you check the interests’ people have. The discussion becomes quite interesting and enriching.  

Discussion on Lifestyle he says is yet another point people are passionate about. You get to know so many things when people speak on current lifestyle. Same is the case with know-how. You ask people of something that they know or are experts and see how interested they are to share the nuts and bolts of the things they know.  

While the acronym and the method seemed good and was working for him, I had one concern. I asked him doesn’t it bring monotony to the whole process? Trying to put everything into a structure or a framework?

What he told me to this question is more interesting. He said this is just a guiding principle to make myself comfortable with the group and get the discussion going while we are together. It’s not that I just keep asking questions, these points give me a starters to share my experiences as well.  

Initially it does appear to be an effort but with more participation I am becoming comfortable with it.  

‘TALK’ for conversation in a group seems to be going right for Pradeep.

Is Heuristics misleading your Judgements?

I recollect a poem during my school days where the little girl finds it difficult to remember 6 multiplied by 9 while learning a table of 6. So she creates a mental shortcut and says 6 multiplied by 9 is ‘doll’. And assigns 54 to a doll. During exams she remembers ‘doll’ and forgets 54.

Does this happen to you and me? We try to use mental shortcuts basis our experience and some-times they go wrong.

Here is a small and interesting situation for you to solve. And you just have 5 seconds to solve it.

 

A bat & a ball costs Rs. 110

Bat costs Rs. 100 more than the ball

How much does the ball cost?

 

What answer did you give? Mostly it must have been Rs. 10/-.

There are some mental calculation we did, used some shortcuts basis our previous learning and experience and arrived at a solution, right?

 

An easy puzzle that evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing and wrong.

 

Check again. The right answer is Rs. 5/-.

 

Note: I converted the original example into Indian rupees. The original example is $ 1.10 used by noble laureate (Economics) Dr. Daniel Kahneman & Shane Fredrick while working on theory of judgement.

       

Here are some more situations :

 

·         Wife gets a dress for herself and asks her husband to guess the price. If the husband quotes the price that is higher than the purchase price, he had it. He needs to be smart enough to tell the price lower than the purchase price and get dumbed at a smart bargain the wife made while buying the dress. This by the way can be a good secret for a happy married life!!!

·         Do you feel having more onions and tomatoes when their supply shortens and the prices go up?

·         If you invest in stock market, does it happen to you that when the prices of shares start moving up, you tend to buy more?

·         Have you splurged money in the mall due the irresistible offer(s) (never before; never after types) and got reprimanded even from your little daughter for the childish behaviour?

 

If all of it or some of it is true, welcome to Heuristics.

 

Heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgements and to make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focussing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others.

Put in other words Heuristics (Greek word meaning ‘to discover’) is an approach to problem solving that takes one’s personal experience into account.
 

Heuristic conclusions are faster and speedier since they are based on your experiences but they may not be accurate. These rules work well in most of the cases but can lead to systematic errors as we have seen with the bat & ball example earlier.

 Heuristics has found applications in many fields. One of them is behavioural finance or behavioural economics etc.

Did you notice that Rs.799/- shirt or a she appeared costing much lesser than Rs. 800/-?  Many companies have since long used this method to draw attention and improve sales.

In 2008, researchers at the University of Southern Brittany monitored a local pizza restaurant that was serving 5 types of pizzas at €8 each. When one of the pizzas was reduced to the price of € 7.99, its share of sales rose from one third of total sale to half of the total sale. Dropping the price by one cent, an insignificant amount in monetary terms, was enough to influence customers’ decisions dramatically.

 

So what do we do?

 It’s exciting to use intuition while making decisions. Exciting because it allows us to access the experience of the past and basis that jump to conclusions. It’s fast. Allows us eliminate the steps. However it can also be misleading. Hence we need to classify the activities that we can afford to go wrong at the cost of speed and use our intuition. Dr. Daniel Kahneman calls this the system 1 thinking. For the other activities a slow, deliberate, thinking mode can be used. Even if it means more efforts and relatively longer time. Dr. Daniel Kahneman calls this as System 2 thinking.

 

Are you a resonant leader?

There is a saying that we can’t choose our bosses. So we have had our share of bosses in our life. If we were to think about all the bosses that we have had, give yourself a moment and think who the best Boss was and vice versa.

Do you recollect their names and their faces? Almost instantly these two names and faces would have come to your mind. Let’s say the good boss was Mr. A and the bad boss was Mr. B. What do you think qualified Mr. A in your scrutiny as ‘Good’ boss and Mr. B as ‘Bad’ boss?

I recently completed an e-learning course by the name ‘Inspiring leadership through emotional intelligence’ by Dr. Richard Boaytzis. The course was offered by Case Western Reserve University on an e-learning site Coursera (www.coursera.org). The course has many interesting and insightful concepts. One such concept is ‘Resonant Leadership’.

Let’s see if Resonant Leadership is one important aspect that qualified Mr. A as a good boss in your books.

Resonant leaders use emotional and social intelligence skills to renew themselves, create positive relationships, and foster a healthy, vibrant environment to engage others towards a common goal.

What words did you mark? Renewal, Positive relationship, Vibrant environment?

So how have they become resonant leaders?

They have adapted to the concept knowingly or unknowingly and they constantly demonstrate the resonant leadership principles.

 The resonant leadership principles are mindfulness; hope and compassion.

Mindfulness
These leaders are aware of what is happening within the body, mind, heart and spirit, while paying attention to what is going on around you.

Hope
They chart a course of action on clearly articulated goals, believing that the goals can be met and eventually achieve them with the sense of well-being.

Compassion
They demonstrate empathy in action – not just caring, but helping others to discover their dreams and supporting them in achieving it.


Did you see all or some elements of these in Mr. A? Did you notice that he was aware of self (better than Mr. B)? Did you see he articulating the goals clearly and Importantly instilling the belief that it can be achieved as a group? And did you notice that this person valued your dreams and supported you in fulfilling them?

You may refer to the below link for more details on resonant leadership.

http://www.teleosleaders.com/assets/pdf/Ivey_Mindfulness.pdf

When I did this Mr. A and Mr. B activity myself, I found that Mr. As exhibited all the three principles in their leadership style. So much so that these principles have become their second nature.

Here is a quick understanding of resonant and dissonant leadership style :

Reaonant leader (RL) creates feeling of harmony
Dissonant leader (DL) operates more on authority

RL focusses on team and their development
DL maintains greater social and emotional distance

RLs are visionaries, coaches, affiliators and exhibit democratic style of leadership
DLs are more commanding and pace-setting

You can find more details on resonant leadership in a book “The Primal Leader’ written by Daniel Goleman.


Can we develop or enhance resonant leadership?

Yes. By observing people who we admire in this area and to whom we have access to. Access will allow us to observe their choice of responses and reactions in various situations. Idea is not to keep evaluating them through the frame but to see if we can embrace some of it that suits our personality.

Where and when can we start using it?

The principles or characteristics that we discussed i.e. mindfulness, hope and empathy does not require us to be in any particular situation or at a particular leadership position. We can start using it wherever we are by demonstrating it with people who we are presently dealing with.

It will be fun to consciously try and embrace the new change.

5 things to make your meetings more effective

Did you see the hindi movie ‘Jaane bhi do Yaaro’? Two protagonists trying to uncover the corruption is the theme of the movie. Towards the end of the movie there is this scene where the audience is watching a drama (Mahabharata) on the stage. That is when the corrupts and the protagonists while chasing each other enter the stage and starts the confusion; chaos and a hearty laughter. Dhritarashtra has just one dialogue after bout of chaotic movements on stage “ye kya ho raha hai” (What’s happening).

If you have re-lived the scene in case you have seen the movie or visualised, now think of the meetings you are required to conduct or be a part of. Do you see some similarities to this scene happening in most of the meetings, be it your office; society or community meetings?  

 We don’t see such a dramatic picture in office meetings though. But my point is simple. More meetings; more time per meeting; higher confusions and less output. 

How do you really overcome this and make your meetings more effective and meaningful? 

 

Here are the 5 things that have helped me greatly.

 

1.      Communicate the agenda clearly:
Quite obvious you will say. However my experience while training teams on this subject is different. Many of them discover that the precision with which the agenda needs to be communicated does not happen most of the times. So you have people wondering what they are supposed to do or contribute during the meeting.  

2.      Keep attendees number not more than 7 :

Now I took this clue from a reference to the book “Yes, you can make meetings more productive” by Michael C Mankins. The rule of 7 states that every attendee over seven reduces the likelihood of making good, quick, executable decision by 10%. So once you hit 16 to 17, your decision effectiveness is basically zero. Just check if this has been the reality for you in your meetings as well. 

3.      Encourage divergent views :

Having orderly meeting does not mean that participants do not get to voice their thoughts on the subject. In an attempt to keep the meeting well within decided timelines we may miss this important point. Participants should be encouraged to share their ideas and thoughts. I have seen a friend of mine use this quite effectively. There is a free and healthy discussion on various issues during the meeting and yet in many cases he and his team are able to close the meeting on time. He says he uses the ‘Solution Bias’ method with is team while putting the divergent views. This means the persons putting their views also have to offer at least one solution to the problem they are raising. He says the method helps the discussion go towards finding more solutions than just putting problem statements on to the table.  

4.      Use the KIS principle :

This is an overused phrase but less practiced. Keep It Simple (KIS) is not as simple as it sounds. We are wired to make things complex. So how do we keep it simple? Especially when the agenda or problem statements at hand may be complex in nature? One of the trainees have shared an idea she uses to keep things simple. She encourages the attendees to share the problem in one sentence and offer solution in two to three statements. Try this, it’s difficult initially but the results will surprise you. 

5.      Summarise :

If you want people to know what the outcome is, who is supposed to do what and by when, this point is very important. Keeping proper minutes and effectively summarising the outcomes to close the meeting have proved to be very effective. We have seen better execution bias when the meetings were summarised well. While the attendees will receive the minutes on mail, you may want to encourage them to take notes for their relevant action points.

Do share your experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too much to handle? Try 80-20 rule

My friend Dilip is a mechanical engineer and works with a company that manufactures components for 2 wheeler and 4 wheeler vehicles. He joined the company some 12 years back as an entry level executive and has risen through the ranks. As with any company and every job he has deadlines to meet, commitments to honor, pressures to handle, complaints to take care of, answers to give to senior management, presentations to make etcetera. In short he has the set of problems that most of us have. Too much on the plate to handle in far too lesser a time.

However this is what I saw different with Dilip. I have not seen him get hassled with his work load, be it in office or at home. He is been managing it quite successfully giving due justice to his work and balancing the work-life balance quite consistently. He gets all the time to connect with friends, take care of his hobby, spend quality time with the family and yet keep succeeding at work. So I decided to check with Dilip his secret.

I asked him the following questions to know his secret. 1. What method does he use? 2. How is he able to maintain consistency at whatever method he uses? 3. If someone wishes to use it, how can she adopt and adapt it?.

My questions turned this engineer into a teacher as he explained me his secret.

He said one economist by the name Vilfred Parito helps him do this. That's little confusing I said. What is the relation of this economist to you managing your activities effective every day?

He said that the Italian economist developed the 80-20 principle in 1906 that he uses.

The principle simply states that ' for many phenomena, 20% of invested input is responsible for 80% of the result obtained'. Put another way, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes.

So how do you use this principle, I asked. To this Dilip said that he asks him the following question every day. " What are the most important things that I have to focus in my first 20% of the time that will take care of 80% of my work?". He went on to say that this allows him to focus on the most important priorities and complete them. This results in him using his time productively rather than just doing the activity.

I was still not convinced. How can one principle allow so much time so consistently? Doesn't he face the crisis situation regularly that does not keep things as simple as he was trying to explain?

He calls the top 20% of the time spent as the 'Master Stroke' of the day. This reduces the possible crisis situation drastically. Even after this if the schedule still demands his time, he knows where to channelize his energy.

Broadly he says this method has worked for him.

So how do we us it?

By using the method what he calls 'My top 3'. He says he does it for the quarter first basis the mandate given to him at his work, breaks it down to top 3 for the month, further goes down to top 3 for the week and then for the day. He does the similar exercise for his personal priorities as well. Then he ensures that he channelizes the top 20% of his time and energy to these activities.

We may want to use this for the month and check if it really works for us. I have started to test the waters. Will check the results after a month.

 

Do you know your child's learning preference

Sometime back I had a chance to listen to a teacher who was conducting a class for eighth grade students. I noticed something unusual with this teacher. She explained a particular concept in 2-3 different styles. For each style I have also noticed different sections of students responding better compared to their other peers. Some students understood the concept when it was explained through pictures, some understood when it was narrated well and some understood when they had a chance to actually work with it.

Do you see your child responding to a particular method or style of learning better than the other? Do you see a particular pattern or a preference in the style in which your child learns better?

This preference of the learning style is what is referred by a teacher from New-Zealand Neil Flemings as VARK or VAK model. According to this model the child may have a preference for Visual learning or Auditory learning; Reading-Writing learning or Kinaesthetic learning or a combination of these styles.

If your child is one of those who believe in ‘seeing is believing’ then she may have a visual learning style preference. The visual learners think in pictures. They are required to create a mental image to retain information. Pictures, maps, charts and movies is something she will find interesting. The concepts she will learn through these methods will help her remember the information quickly.

If your child finds listening enjoyable, if she likes to think in words than pictures and generally good at speaking & presenting then her preferred style is auditory learning. People with auditory learning preference are good at listening, writing, storytelling, explaining; teaching and related activities.

Some children remember by doing things themselves. If your child loves to learn by experimenting and prefer to remember & process information by actually seeing or participating in the activity then her preference is kinaesthetic style of learning. Give her your mobile and she will want to open it to see what’s inside.

Here are the key words for your quick reference.

Visual	Auditory	Kinaesthetic
Picture	Tone	Body movements
Shape	Listening	Gestures
Sculpture	Rhythms	Object manipulation
Painting	Presenting	Experimentation

 

Your observation and interaction will give you an indicator of the learning preference of your child. There are also a set of questionnaire that can help you understand her learning preference better. In case you are interested to go the scientific way, you may check this link to take the assessment and arrive at the learning preference.

http://teachertools.londongt.org/?page=VAK

Helps check VAK preference

 

Has VAK helped parents or students so far?

Experts in the field of education and psychology have debated VAK and other learning theories or models quite extensively. Experiments do not give an empirical evidence that aligning teaching style to learning preference helps. Some of them have also said that labelling individuals on any one particular style may not be appropriate and can suggest, indirectly though that she will have limitations in learning if the subject requires other styles for learning.

So why should you bother to know about the learning preference? How it will help you?

In spite of all the discussions for and against VAK and other learning theories, VAK learning model remains widely used.

If we know the learning preference, will it not help in consciously creating an environment that fosters better; easier; enjoyable and faster learning for our children?

An injection of inspiration

I and my wife recently attended a lecture on “inspired living’ by Smt. Jaya Row. The topic caught our attention. As we were driving down to the venue, we thought to ourselves that are we not living an inspired life? We were quite curious on what the speaker, a renowned authority on Bhagwad Gita will share with us.

We entered the packed hall amidst soothing Bhajans.  The Bhajans got us into the frame of mind to receive and understand what Smt. Jaya Row was to share with the audience.

She started by stating that today science and technology has made a sea difference in the way we live. The sophistication that we enjoy and the comforts that we have in our life were difficult even to imagine 25 years back. So with all this in life we should be really happy; kicked about things and inspired in our lives. However she said there is a big discontentment amongst each one of us. Ask 5 year old how was your school today and mostly she will say it’s boring and ask a 70 year old and she will have her share of problems in life.

With all the technological advancements; comforts; speed and better quality of life what must be the reason of this dis-satisfaction? Do you experience the similar issues? What do you think may be the cause of these issues?

The most important reason is Self – centricity says Smt. Jaya Row. Let me repeat this to highlight its importance. Self-Centricity. We are so obsessed with self these days that it is making our view on life and living very myopic. Making us sick; nervous and leading to lack of motivation even in basic areas of life. We hardly see the world beyond self. Look at your last 5 weekend and holiday schedules. Did you see a very restrictive activity pattern?

So what’s the way out?

According to her one of the best injections of inspiration is to latch on to something that makes you forget about yourself; something that is bigger than you. Teaching to the underprivileged for example. You may choose any thing that you like where you are able to contribute in terms of your talent or time. Something that will take you in a different world; give you a satisfaction and make you happy. The law they say is that you give you gain; you grab you lose. I guess this was taught to us when we were in school?

Want to change your mood? use this....

Of the many concepts you learn during an NLP course is a concept called as 'Anchors'. But before anchors a bit on NLP. NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. In layman's terms this means using the power of language to influence your state of mind. In other words you condition or program  your brain (the neuro system) with the help of the choice of powerful words and methods to achieve the desired behaviour.

The question is can you really influence and change your behaviour and people around by using the powerful language for mutually beneficial outcomes? On NLP and on this question we will separately see in another blog. For now let's see if we can change our mood by using a concept from NLP called as anchors.

Webster dictionary defines anchor in 3 ways. a. A heavy device that is attached to the boat or ship by a rope or chain and that is thrown into the water to hold that boat or shop in place; b. A person or thing that provides strength and support; c. A large store that attracts customers such as shopping mall.

In the context of NLP, anchor is a stimulus which reminds you of events and can change your state positively to negatively. The stimulus can involve all the senses (eg something you see, hear, feel, taste or smell) and can be internal or external.

An internal anchor is generated in your mind. Example is you remember a visual image that evoke certain feeling. An external anchor is something external that influences you. Example is some music that reminds you of some experience associated with that music.

My friend Yateesh has chosen an external anchor for changing his mood. There comes a time in his life as is the case with each one of us when we ate not happy, in a low mood but can't afford to remain in that state for long due to personal and professional commitments. Whenever he is in such a situation he CLAPS 5 times. He has associated 5 times calps with mood revival, positive energy and quick action. Most often than this method had helped him come our of sombre mood quickly.

The anchors have helped me in almost all the situations that I used them.

You can choose internal or any type of external anchor that you are comfortable with and try this method. Try it for the next one week or so and check it out yourself. Do share your feedback.

Do you have your 'Hackathon' in place?

The Economic Times, one of the leading business news papers recently published an article. The article spoke about the concept of 'Hackathon'. I was as curious as you are to know what this concept really means.

Its a one week global event organized by Microsoft where its employees from 114 countries participate to think differently.

"Hackathon is about people getting involved in understanding how they have changed their thinking, in terms of challenger spirit and growth hacking in order to make things happen faster" defined  Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India.

"We are trying to get our employees to think about ways in which we can disrupt what we have done so far, relook every situation we are in, and differentiate," he says. To growth-hack, is to have the mindset that you need to find the shortest path to success. "It is what we call 'jugaad', but based on principles, to make sure your methods stand the test of time," he adds.

So what is the significance and why are we discussing it today?

We have a constant fight against time to complete the work or activities or assignments or meetings at hand in the shortest possible time and with more productive outcomes. You agree?

What caught my attention in 'Hackathon' are the key words that define it. It has key words like thinking differently; challenger spirit; making things faster; disrupt what has been done so far and relook at every situation & differentiate.

Do you think at an individual level these words apply to you and me as well? Do you believe that filtering our activities through the framework of these words can improve our efficiency?

Lets check this with an example

Lets say on the professional side you are told to reduce the project timeline & cost by 20%. On the personal side you are concerned that your daughter's exam is nearing and you want to remain involved so she gets the comfort and confidence to crack the exams with better grades.

It will be interesting to write down the defining words of Hackathon one after the other and check whether it re-directs our focus; re-orients our energy and improves our efficiency.

 

My experience. It does. I just did this exercise with my set of priorities...

 

How about you?