Passion

One question that I hear and may not have a right answer is “How do you measure passion?”. When I hear this question, (I almost always hear this discussion during training sessions) it makes me laugh. The reason is, we are so metamorphosed that we always think in terms of metrices :-). “Man, you need not measure passion, look at the other person’s eyes”, is almost always my answer. If you really want to see it, that is the place where you see it. And if someone wants to measure it, all I tell is “god forbid and pardon this poor soul for his (her) ignorance”.

 OK, coming back to the point, I felt there is yet another way. Ask this question “What keeps you awake early in the morning? (read 4:00am or earlier)”. If there is anything that keeps you awake, this could be something that you are passionate about. (By the way, it is not insomnia. You better see a doctor then)

I have tried asking this question with different set of people and I get varied responses. Many a times I see people laughing away at that question, they claim to say that there is nothing that keeps them away from their sleep. I don’t know, if that is someone’s case. If it is true for you, you better be aware. Here, mostly what I have observed is, people are actually thinking deep for answer to this question while they try to make me feel that it is an irrelevant one. If someone is trying to do that, I would tell that this is a good sign. At least, you have experienced it once in your life.

I have also seen my best people, being completely lost when they do what they love the most. If you are not sure why you do it that way, it is very nicely explained in the book, Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Note: I woke up quiet early today morning and I felt like writing this early enough. Before I become lazy and forget :-)

Building TRUST

The other day, I was having a mentoring session with one of my leads. The whole discussion point started with a build failure and we ended up discussing for 90 minutes. There were 2 topics that came in during this discussion, symptoms and root causes. We debated on the root cause and finally it boiled down to having more TRUST among team members. We also did have a discussion on symptom and manifestation; however I plan to have it as a separate discussion later. The most important point that came up was “OK, how do we build trust”. I did not have a straight forward answer and I understand still I do not have it. That kept me thinking and I could come up with below framework. At least this is something where we could start.

 As always, my favourite and the most important one is COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE and COMMUNICATE. If there is good enough, healthy communication among team members and they are aligned on goals, we have almost won the battle. There are various effective channels of communicating with(in) team. The important part is to ensure that this is happening on a regular basis. There is a set cadence. 3 effective ways of having great communication are

• Regular retrospectives (Discussed this in an earlier thread here)
• Regular feedback sessions. The important aspect to be noted here is, this need to be both ways. (Again, discussed this in an earlier thread here)
• Timely appreciations. This is something most are not really good at. We take things for granted and forget. Did I say “forget”? (Shame on me)

Being “transparent” with team members is yet another important aspect. Let them know why we do, what we do. It is always better because when others understand this, they are inclined to appreciate stuffs better.

Being “consistent and predictable”. As leaders, we are always being watched. Consistency and predictability is the key. If we expect our team to be consistent and predictable, we better be.

Enable and empower them. A leader becomes effective only when the team members are able to replace the leader. And that is a definitive benchmark for any leader, how many in the team can replace leader himself. Gone are the days of command and control. A leader moves to next level only when the team elevates the leader up and not when the team members pull him down. When the next level is not rightly enabled and empowered, they pull you down :-)

Once the team members are enabled, the most important thing a leader can do is to give them their space. Let them be alone. Give their breathing space. Let them explore. But guide them.

Allow them to fail. The faster the team fails, the faster they learn, the better they become.

Any transformation takes time. Be patient. Steven Covey has put it right, when he mentioned about the law of Farming. There is no silver bullet, no short cut. If it takes so much time, give that time. There is a defined timeline to reap the benefits after we sow the seeds. The challenge here is to know how long we need to wait, since we cannot be waiting indefinitely. Wait as much required and know when it needs to quit.

And finally, make them feel important. The best way that has worked for me is to tell it on face. Never hesitate to tell the team members that “You are important!!!”. Believe me, it means a lot for them, and by the way when you tell that, do not fake. The new generation is smarter than us:-)

Universal Power

Long time since I blogged. To be frank, I was in depression:-). I hated blogging for some time. I felt things were not moving the way I wanted it to be (rather my way:-) ).

How long can one be depressed? Not too long. So I thought it is time to give way and yah, it is always a cycle. May be sooner I will again get into that cycle and there will be no blogs. But that does not mean that I will stop thinking about stuffs. It just means that I hate writing it out.

Last week, I was thinking about something interesting!!! What is God?

I am not an atheist. And here is my definition of god.

It is a universal power, a divine intervention that does things possibly which is beyond our control, things that human beings cannot do. And, when I think a little deep, I felt like this could have been initial reasons when “god” that we refer to came into existence. (correction here, god must have existed prior to that, otherwise we would not have existed, after all, it is the divine intervention). This is where I really get relate to the message that movie MATRIX is trying to tell. Something that is beyond human capability and that we could not visualize. One thing that I can be sure is that we are towards becoming god, (or is that a contradiction:-) ), because we are able to achieve more than we were able to do earlier. We understand things better then what we know earlier.

What actually surprises me is that we humans, even after gaining so much knowledge and control over other living beings, we are still “kids” in front of this “divine intervention”. We do not have much control over nature. Even with all the developments, knowhow that we achieved, we are always helpless, when nature shows its fury. We just become the victims.

The thoughts are going deeper and stronger… Time for me to stop…

Before I stop, let me answer this question, does god exist? Yes. May be not in the form that we are aware off. That was just the creation by creative people who were able to visualize better than us:-).

Happy new year, 2013, the year of Snakes.