Serendipity and Learning

As the sessions progressed and we spoke about appreciation, we asked the group - so what exactly are you appreciating someone for? And came the reply: Ownership Responsbility Accountability Problem Solving Planning Prioritizing Focus and so on. If the behaviour is identified correctly, the person might go back with a feeling, "this is what I need to repeat" or "this is my strength" and so on.  And we also heard - Communication, Collaboration, Helping and Timely Delivery. What is the problem with these 4 words? Communication and Collaboration are too vague and dont leave the person with something tangible.  Helping, unless it can be measured and quantified is often a lazy term to be used when appreciating or justifying your time.  And Timely Delivery is almost always an outcome - it is never the cause of appreciation. So, the next time you catch yourself using these vague words, pause and think, exactly what are you appreciating?

 Worked with a bunch of talented technologists over the last few days. And gave them an exercise "Appreciate an intern" The majority of the responses were along the lines of "great job, good job". Some of them were "good job, great job" with a disclaimer. Some found it difficult to appreciate (is there any reason to appreciate?). Fairly common - I have written about this in my book as well - but what is funny is that they are saying this because they have received appreciation in much the same way.  So, we worked from there and asked - what is wrong with this? And they all got it right.  What is the purpose of appreciation - and they got that right as well.  If you know that this sort of vague appreciation is not helping the team, why are you not doing it the right way? And. how are you appreciating your team?

 The previous post did not have any reference to Artificial Intelligence or Metaverse or AR or Gaming. Why? Because much of behaviour change is about focused skill building. And you can get the bells and whistles via Gaming or metaverse or AR. But you need an assessor, who is giving you real time feedback when you practice those skills with "Conscious competence". As far I know it there is no AI assessor that can do it - but this is a space an AI skills coach can be useful - who understands the candidate and works with the candidate to give very specific feedback.  Until then, it is back to basics. Practice, apply, learn, unlearn, relearn, apply till you get it somewhat right. 

These are the 4 broad shifts I have seen in the L&D landscape over the last few years (this is a slightly elaborated post from the year end update ). These are not shifts - these are more my learnings and you can classify these as my approach to L&D more than anything else.  The death of inspirational training. A few years ago, this was the norm. Inspiration driven training with quotes, examples, visuals was supposed to move the audience into taking action. I have written about it here . Bordering on motivational talk, it exhorted the audience to "change". Net result - zero. Smiley sheets full marks.  There are still occasions where you might want to use it sparingly, but well not so much. The death of day long trainings. Earlier trainings ran for 4 days like a test match and then came down to 1 day (8 hours). Post pandemic, I have found it useful to keep trainings to 2 hours max. What that also means is cut down on the inspiration talk and all that dive into the topi...

  As a facilitator, preparation is very important for me. I create checklists, notes, timings for every work I do. Even if it is something I have done many times, I always ensure I go through it once before we get started.  I never try to wing it. The one time in my career I tried to wing it, it resulted in a not so great experience, so for me it has been a learning. As a consultant (when I was one), we get that one chance in front of the client. And if they have to call us again, we have to get it right every single time, therefore we cannot wing it.  And when I am the client, I see consultants wing it - I dont realise why they dont realise this. Maybe overconfidence, maybe casual, maybe it is not important, but why wing it? Why not give every client the best you have got? Isnt that why they have employed you? 

As I near 500 odd coaching hours, one of the things I am struggling with is the struggle between process and intuition.  As a coach, we have to trust our intuition and stay with the client. But there is also a process we have to follow. I am not arguing that the process is not good or the process is insufficient, but there are times when a process step might be skipped due to the intuition that you have acquired while talking to the client. But I have seen expert coaches be able to do both effortlessly. So, clearly, I am at conscious competence and I need to move to unconscious competence.  Thoughts as I am trying to internalise the coaching process. 

 IRCTC is a monopoly, yet it has irritating ads on its platform. Exactly why? Sure, source of revenue. And oh, the IRCTC captcha I am sure is designed by a teacher. Almost feels like imposition.  And whoever designed the chat interface in IRCTC is a genius. Dilbertian genius.  But on a larger point, monopolies have no incentive to get better. So they continue to live on, as dinosaurs, until a meteor strikes them.