"CorporateTheatre"

The Wisdom of Teams - 1

2011-12-04T23:01:00.001-08:00

(In this series of posts offering excerpts from the book, 'The Wisdom of Teams' by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith (Harvard Business School Press), the excerpts are in bold and the relevant CorporateTheatre concepts are in italics.)

We should emphasize that we are relating stories of teams, not whole organizations. We have purposely sought out teams in organizations with a wide range of performance records to better understand team dynamics in different settings. The team accomplishments, often extraordinary, are nonetheless only those of a team and, more or less, only coincide with the life of the team. Nonetheless, we have gained both knowledge and conviction by observing how consistently the conditions for team performance emerge across such a wide variety of business conditions and organizational settings.

The human animal is genetically programmed to hunt, survive, and win in packs. Team Instinct is our natural instinct and the ultimate challenge of leadership is to create 'natural' teams. Once you create a natural team you have programmed for excellence by default. Because there is no 'natural' team, that is comfortable being second. The instinctive programming of a natural team is to be first, to win.

A demanding performance challenge tends to create a team. The hunger for performance is far more important to team success than team-building exercises, special incentives, or team leaders with ideal profiles. In fact, teams often form around such challenges without any help or support from management. Conversely, potential teams without such challenges usually fail to become teams.

A group of people become a team only when they have clarity of a common goal and alignment to a common success. Without this clarity and alignment, they can spend years together, do a host of 'team-building' activity together and still remain only a group of people.

Moreover, in high-performance teams, the role of the team leader is less important and more difficult to identify because all members lead the team at different times.

The designated leader of a natural team only defines the destination - where the team should reach, by when, and what are the parameters that will make reaching the destination a success. But once the journey starts, whoever knows that part of the journey best, becomes the leader irrespective of formal designation or hierarchy. The others in the team empower this process. The designated leader thus becomes an 'enabler' of team leadership.

Further, a natural team expects total clarity about the destination. They do not expect clarity about the journey. The journey evolves as they go along. If the designated leader defines the destination as well as the journey, the journey may not be as effective or enjoyable as it could otherwise be. Leaving the journey open allows the team to respond creatively and powerfully to whatever happens on the way.

"The Wisdom of Teams" - Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith - Harvard Business School Press

2011-12-04T22:13:00.001-08:00

I recently came across this brilliant book. It reinforces and validates through research, almost every single concept and principle experienced and shared by participants in "CorporateTheatre" workshops. It is uncanny! Around 35,000 workshop participants, since June 2002, have behaviourally demonstrated and consistently shared the power of 'Natural' teams. These concepts and insights have been captured in this blog over the past few years. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith have done research with a variety of high performance teams as well as teams that have failed, and their findings are aboslutely in sync.

Over the next few posts I will be sharing with my readers excerpts from the book and the "CorporateTheatre" insights that reflect the same principles.

I would also strongly recommend the book as compulsory reading for all those who are in the business of building, leading, and empowering teams.

Happy reading !

The Power of Emotion in Leadership

2011-10-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

(Excerpts from the article, "Leading by Heart" - Team CD's write-up on Daniel Goleman's new book, "Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence", in the Economic Times Corporate Dossier of 14 October 2011)

"Is there a relationship between EI and effective leadership? To get answers, Goleman studied the competency models of 188 companies to determine which personal capabilities - technical, analytical or EI - drove outstanding performance within these organisations and to what degree. The study threw up dramatic results. As he explains in the book, "Intellect was a driver of outstanding performance. Cognitive skills such as big picture thinking and long term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills and IQ to EI as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as others for jobs at all levels."

The study also revealed that the higher the rank of a star performer, the more EI showed up as a reason for his or her effectiveness - nearly 90%. "Our research with HayGroup shows that the more EI-based competencies a leader can display at full strength - such as emotional self-awareness, the drive to achieve and other self-mastery abilities, empathy, persuasion and collaboration - the greater their business results", says Goleman.

* * * *

According to Goleman, what makes a good leader is a high degree of self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy. Self-aware leaders who are in touch with their emotions are better able to gauge how their own feelings affect them, their co-workers, and their own performance. "One sure sign of self-awareness in a leader is that there is no gap between what they say and how they behave; another sign is that the leader is aware of how he/she is being seen by others." he says.

* * * *

Secure executives who are on top of their feelings and impulses create an environment of trust and fairness. Politics and infighting dip sharply as a result and productivity jumps.

* * * *

According to Goleman, the single most important element in group intelligence is social harmony. Robert Sternberg, a Yale psychologist and his student, Wendy Williams, conducted research on why some groups are more effective than others, and found surprising results. Their conclusion: while a group can be no smarter than the sum total of all specific strengths, it can be dumber if its internal workings don't allow people to share their talents. "The strongest predictor of a team's performance is its harmony. Building trust and opening lines of communication make a big difference. Leaders can model and embody these as well as openly encourage them." he says.

* * * *

But in the cold, process driven, result-oriented world of business, do emotions really have a place? Goleman builds a case. Happy employees have a direct impact on the topline. A study shows that for every one percent improvement in the service climate, there's a two percent increase in revenue. "For better or for worse, emotions are everywhere in the modern corporation. The best leaders know this and realise that their emotional task is to help people get into and stay in the best internal state for optimal performance." he says.

* * * *

My Comments:
Participants who have been through the "CorporateTheatre" workshops - be it the 1-day 'Power Team Dynamics' module, or the 2-day 'Leadership Through Team Instinct' module would have experienced the above possibilities of 'social harmony', collaboration, trust, empathy, self and other awareness, and emotional richness that are instinctively, instantly, and abundantly possible in the 'natural' team environment. They would have also experienced how to create such 'natural' teams by using the 3 Pillars. I am excited as well as delighted to share with you this validation of that experience through Goleman's research and writing.

(Thanks to Vinod Mahanta of Economic Times, Corporate Dossier, for this article.)

"CorporateTheatre" and Corporate Values

2011-09-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

(Excerpts from a Proposal to a Client on how "CorporateTheatre" addresses certain key corporate values relevant to their organization.) Thought of sharing this on the blog as these could be relevant core values to any organization that seeks to deliver excellence in an environment that sustains client focus as well as the growth and self-actualization of their own people.

Integrity – When one’s behaviour is in alignment with one’s deeper and instinctive values for growth and self-actualization, a person becomes integrated. Integrity is outward behaviour that reflects this inner integration. One of the essential attitudinal ingredients in being integrated is to be able to function in the here-and-now, to be completely available to what is happening in this moment. Participants will experience this ability to be completely available and function from a core that is beyond one’s limited baggage-oriented perspectives.

Passion – One behaviour that is consistently experienced and demonstrated throughout the workshop is Passion – Total commitment, energy, and involvement with the task at hand, with alignment of individual and functional goals to the larger team goal.

Openness and Respect – Respect is a derivative of the Latin ‘re spectare’ – to see oneself. I can genuinely respect another only when I can see myself in the other and the common core that we both share beyond the superficial personality patterns on the surface. This is akin to ‘actors’ bonding at a common core and then taking on functional hierarchy and even intense functional conflict without experiencing human hierarchy or human conflict. Respect can happen only at this level of bonding. Respect breeds receptivity, sensitivity, and acceptance of the roles that we need to play and there is openness to each other’s motives and behaviour.

Accountability – Participants will consistently demonstrate their instinctive ability to invest in their own performance, as well as in each other’s performance and to take responsibility for the play as a whole. While giving credit to individual contributions, they will accept responsibility for collective failure without ‘blame-storming’ or negativity and without becoming ‘losers’.

Being Self-critical – More importantly, we will look at the possibility of ‘self-acceptance’, where we celebrate our positives and compensate for each other’s inadequacies. This will call for a genuine acceptance of our strengths as well as understanding of our weak areas without defensiveness. In the process we will experience that competencies can and should vary but that commitment should be equal across all levels.

Big Challenges – A good mountaineer is always looking for a higher mountain to climb. And the higher and tougher the mountain, the greater the celebration. Participants will consistently demonstrate their ability to deliver excellence and ENJOY it under constantly changing and increasingly challenging conditions. They will experience that fun-at-work is not about doing ‘fun’ things at the work place but it is about having fun without diluting the passion, the creativity, the commitment to quality, the customer-focus, and the discipline of a common goal and a shared success.

Self-Acceptance More Important Than Self-Confidence

2011-08-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

One significant insight that has come to me rather intensely in recent workshops is that self-acceptance is far more important and relevant than self-confidence. Typically, in theatre, when we start work on a new play, there is great insecurity. There is even the fear whether the play will turn out well and audiences will accept it. Even though we invite friends to come in for the rehearsals to give us feedback during the course of the later rehearsals, the first show for the public is a very scary experience. If it were necessary for the cast and crew to be self-confident before they get on stage, most plays wouldn't happen.

If you were to go backstage before a play starts you would find the actors and the crew reassuring each other, hugging, holding hands, meditating, helping each other to manage the fear and tension. What works at this point is not self-confidence. Instead, there is an acceptance of the fear, the tension, the doubts and the insecurity as part of the performance process. Perhaps going through this stage together is one of the reasons why a theatre group becomes so closely integrated.

Sometimes our egos cannot accept that we are nervous and uncomfortable before taking on a new challenge. We tend to chastise ourselves wondering, "why am I feeling this way?", or "I should relax", or "they must not see that I am nervous'. Instead, if we give ourselves the freedom to be tense, nervous, and others the freedom to think what they will about us, and accept this as the reality of the moment, and then consciously decide to put ourselves completely into the task at hand without denying what we are experiencing, we move beyond the fear. No more energy is wasted on resisting what is. All our energy is now available to do what needs to be done at that moment.

In the process, we actually empower ourselves and also energize others all the more.

'Process' v/s 'Product' - The Key to Being an Exemplary Organization

2011-06-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

"If you’re like most senior executives, you want your organization to be exemplary. But if you’re honest with yourself, you also know that it’s not and that, in fact, you’re not even sure what exemplary means or how you’ll ever get there. Most management writing won’t help: despite the multitude of volumes written on organizational excellence, nothing we’re aware of combines a view on the “steady state” of high, sustainable organizational performance with a dynamic perspective on how companies can transform themselves to achieve it.
We’ve tried to fill that gap with our forthcoming book, Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Wiley, June 2011), from which this article is adapted. Our central message is that focusing on organizational health—the ability of your organization to align, execute, and renew itself faster than your competitors can—is just as important as focusing on the traditional drivers of business performance. Organizational health is about adapting to the present and shaping the future faster and better than the competition. Healthy organizations don’t merely learn to adjust themselves to their current context or to challenges that lie just ahead; they create a capacity to learn and keep changing over time. This, we believe, is where ultimate competitive advantage lies."

The above passage is excerpted from an introduction to the book "Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage", by Scott Keller and Colin Price, in the McKinsey Quarterly (June 2011).

The key ingredient to being a learning and adapting individual or organization is to experience oneself as a 'process' and not as a 'product'. As experienced during the "CorporateTheatre" workshops, within the 'personality cage', people are products - 'this is the way I was, this is the way I am, this is the way I will be'. Once they empower themselves to drop that cage, they become processes - this is the way I was, this is the way I now am based on my new environment, and what I am tomorrow will depend on the environment that I am in tomorrow. To use the actor's parlance, the character keeps changing according to the need of the current play, while preserving at the core the 'actor' that underlies all the characters. The essential values of the actor remains unchanged, while the characters can be varied in terms of appearance and functionality.

The same holds true for organizations. An organization caged within a set 'personality pattern' of 'this is the way I am', cannot learn, change, or adapt, except on the superficial periphery. Knew knowledge and experience come and go but make no difference to the basic character and functioning of the organization. Learning, Growing, Adapting, are only words and concepts that do not affect or change organizational behaviour in any way.

On the contrary, as 'processes' one is in a state of constant adaption, change, learning, and actual growth. New stimuli and new understanding elicit new and fresh responses and behaviour, and this can be very powerful and deeply energizing, as intensely experienced during the workshops. Once participants drop their 'personality prisons', they keep finding new competencies, fresh insights, and constant energy. As heard often during participant feedback,"nothing is impossible". As individuals and as teams, they fight to win, while applauding the excellence of their competition. In the process, they are far more in control of their own winning, while learning from the excellence of the competitor. They experience themselves as exemplary individuals, and exemplary teams - the ideal foundation for exemplary organizations.

Leadership & Teamwork - An Amazing Audio-Visual !

2010-11-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a brilliant audio-visual on the Joy of Creative Leadership and Teamwork. Courtesy TED, and many thanks to Prakash Dharmarajan for forwarding this to me.

Itay Talgam: Lead like the great conductors | Video on TED.com

"Collaboration Works Better Than Competition"

2010-10-25T04:07:00.000-07:00

This interview with Prof. MJ Xavier, the newly appointed Director of IIM, Ranchi reinforces the "CorporateTheatre" concept of Collaboration being more powerful than Competition in eliciting great performances from individuals and teams. He also talks about the relevance of understanding and practising management in the Indian context rather than simply importing them from the West. Thanks to Chitradeepa A for this very relevant interview published in the Education Supplement of The Hindu, dated 25th October, 2010.

The Hindu : Education : Collaboration works better than competition, says IIM director

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

2010-10-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

This brilliant video powerfully reinforces many of the critical concepts regarding 'Motivation' as experienced through "CorporateTheatre".

'Alignment' and not 'Surrender'

2010-10-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

A recent issue of the Corporate Dossier (Economic Times) carries a feature by Priyanka Sangani on well known and highly respected Management Guru, Tom Peters. The article has the following passage:

"Quoting from The Dream Manager, a book he recently read, Peters says that every individual has a dream that he wants to accomplish, and the role of the leader is to help his or her people to achieve that. And this doesn't stem from altruistic pangs or some psycho babble, it is plain common sense. If employees see that they are working towards achieving their goal, they are more engaged and focussed towards the greater goal of the business."

This point is constantly experienced and proved in the "CorporateTheatre" workshops.

As explained in another post in this blog, it is ineffective, in fact counterproductive, to expect people to surrender or drop their egos. 'We' is more important than 'I' may be a noble thought, but hardly practical when dealing with ambitious career professionals aiming at leading organizations themselves. The challenge of leadership is therefore to align individual egos and aspirations to the team/organizational goals. In other words, every individual must be convinced that if the organizational/team goal as outlined is achieved, they can WIN in a way that is meaningful to them.

Having said this, it is possible that one odd person in a team may have an individual aspiration that is not alignable to the team's functioning and goals. As covered elsewhere in this blog, a good team or a good leader is not a soft team or a soft leader. If the team finds a person who is not aligned and whose lack of alignment is disrupting the team's flow towards excellence, they use the 3-R option.

The first 'R' is Re-align. Do everything possible to convince the person concerned that it is in their own interest to work towards the team's set objectives. If this is not possible, the second 'R' is used - Redeploy. Put the person in another role or function where he or she may be able to find alignment or at least will not block the team's energy. If that too is not possible, we use the last option - the third 'R' - Remove. If removal is the only option, it is better to do it as quickly and clinically as possible. If the person who is not re-alignable or re-deployable happens to be a high profile or a high-visibility individual, it is all the more important to take action quickly. Such a person can distract many others in the team who would otherwise be alignable to the team's success and can be valuable contributors.

The Power of Commitment

2010-10-09T00:07:00.000-07:00

One of the critical learning insights that repeatedly and consistently surfaces in "CorporateTheatre" workshops is this:

"When the commitment is total and the clarity is high, people most often find necessary competencies and create the resources. When the commitment is not total and the clarity is inadequate even existing competencies and resources go unutilized."

This learning is very clearly reinforced in the article, "The People Factor" by Lou Pritchett, Executive Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development, for Procter and Gamble. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article published in the CD supplement of The Economic Times, dated 6th August:

"Today, raw materials and technology are available to every company in every country in the world! Therefore, the only thing that will separate the winners from the losers will be the quality, character, training, and commitment, of the work force."

Those who have been through the earlier posts in my blog will certainly see the remarkable connect between Mr. Pritchett's thoughts, and the 3 Pillars of Natural Teams, as experienced through "CorporateTheatre". (I am mentioning the relevant Pillar against the exercepts given below):

"... the key is to trust them because people can never be trustworthy until they experience the overt act of first being trusted." - the 3rd Pillar : 'Everyone (in the team) has complete trust in the other person's clarity and commitment.'

"... if I surrounded myself with competent people, provided them with all the data and information to which I had access, never had hidden agendas, and always let my people know everything I knew, we could not fail. This approach worked for me, and I am convinced it will work for any manager, anytime, anywhere." - the 2nd Pillar: 'In a Natural Team everyone has clarity of the same task and alignment to the same success.'. This excerpt also reinforces the 3rd Pillar - Trust.

Details regarding the 3 Pillars, including the 1st Pillar (Integration as 'Actors' - because you cannot integrate 'Characters') can be found in the relevant posts in this blog. The posts also talk about how to deal with with the odd unfortunate person in the team who may not live up to the trust vested in them.

"CorporateTheatre" & Core Values

2010-06-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

(Excerpts from a recent proposal on how "CorporateTheatre" can facilitate the EXPERIENCING of the core values of a particular organization.)

Oneness: The basic foundation of a natural team is ‘Integration’. Using the theatre metaphor, Integration can happen only at the level of the ‘actor’. ‘Characters’ cannot integrate. For instance the King and the Slave, the Assassin and the Victim, experience hierarchy and conflict. But at the level of the actor there is no hierarchy and no conflict. Each actor is doing everything possible to make their own as well as the other actor’s performance as realistic as possible. Many organizations spend a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to integrate characters - people confined within their 'personality cages' of seniority, designation, qualification, experience, etc.). Participants in the CT workshop experience their ability to integrate powerfully as actors within minutes, and then take on functional hierarchy and even functional conflict as per the current and changing needs of the team, without getting into human hierarchy and human conflict.

Commitment: Commitment, like ‘Integrity’ has to be total. One cannot have 90% commitment just like there is no such thing as 90% integrity. Competencies can vary from individual to individual, and in the same individual from situation to situation. But commitment must remain consistent. A critical message repeatedly reinforced by the CT process is that when the commitment is total, new competencies get discovered and resources get created. Without commitment, even existing competencies and resources remain unutilized or underutilized. Commitment comes not out of individuals surrendering to the team. That may be a noble value but not always practical. Rather, it comes out of individual egos getting aligned to a common goal and a common success. Participants will experience the power of alignment, and the resulting commitment and its immense possibilities.

Creativity: Creativity is often thought of as a ‘technique’, or ‘thinking out of the box’. Participants will experientially redefine creativity. When you want to be different for the sake of being different, when you want to think out of the box you may end up blocking creativity. What you need may be in the box. Instead, creativity will be experienced as a free, committed, energized response to the need of the moment. And when individuals are free to express themselves without fear of rejection or ridicule, individual creativity becomes team innovation.

Agility: CT explores agility as the freedom to experience oneself and the world around as a ‘process’ and not as a ‘product’. Within the ‘personality prison’ I am a product - this is the way I am, this is the way I will be. Without the personality cage we become processes. Yesterday I felt introverted. Today I see myself as an extrovert. As they say in Zen, “you never step in the same river twice”. As a product I see the same river. As a process I see the constantly flowing changing water and all the wonders that come with it. Agility is the ability to reinvent oneself in complete freedom and with total availability in the ‘here-and-now’. Participants in the workshop experience and express their ability to continuously adapt themselves to constantly changing teams, and situations, in a matter of minutes.

Adding Value: In many organizations we create role clarity before goal clarity. Worse, in some cases while there is clarity of the role, there is no idea about the goal itself. Participants will experience that when I know what the team has to achieve, when I know what I can contribute, and when I know what the other people around me are contributing, only then can I add value to any process. Another critical component of adding value is the attitude, rather than the technique of ‘quality’ – the commitment to continuously improve on what is current available.

Integrity: In life, as in theatre, we play many different roles. We could be King in one play, and Slave in the next. So also the same individual may be Boss to someone, subordinate to someone, peer to someone, mentor, mentee, spouse, parent, son or daughter. However, the actor is the same. CT experiences Integrity as being centred in the actor. Irrespective of the roles we play, how do we remain centred in the actor within us, and how do we relate to the actor in the other. We also realise that if the actor does anything that is not consistent with the character he or she has to play, the role is ineffective and even disruptive. For this consistency, my role, my behaviour, my thoughts, and my body language has to be in alignment with the role that I am playing. Then every role has integrity.

The Power of a Common Purpose - Converting Groups into Teams

2010-06-21T00:53:00.000-07:00

In November 2009, Harvard Business Review brought out The Drucker Centennial, featuring the highly respected management thinker, Peter Drucker. In his foreword Editor Adi Ignatius states:

". . . . Drucker's belief in a strong sense of purpose has been central to his organization's work, in part because employees are so much more motivated by a higher sense of purpose than by money alone."

No doubt, material rewards are very relevant towards motivating people. One very simple truth is that the vast majority of us have qualified ourselves, and work, for one fundamental reason - better lifestyles. We want better lifestyles for ourselves and for the people that we care for. However, beyond a point, material rewards can actually block positive team behaviour. In "CorporateTheatre" workshops, participants experience and demonstrate immensely exciting possibilities as individuals and as teams. We then go on to explore the attitudes and the environment that enabled brilliant performances calling for instant integration into new teams, intense collaboration, phenomenal creativity, exciting innovation, open and trusting communication, and deep commitment. When processing this, a statement that is often heard is,

"This ideal team behaviour was possible here because there were no material rewards".

We ask the team,

"What is the purpose of material rewards? Are they meant to enhance performance or block it?"

The answer is obvious.

The realisation dawns that material rewards per se are not the problem. The problem lies in the way rewards are given. Very often, the way performance is appraised and rewards given, compel people to focus on self-seeking individual gratification rather than a higher purpose.

During the course of the workshop, the group is often divided into constantly changing teams. Each time, they assemble together and wait for instructions on what the next activity is. As soon as the next objective is outlined, the purpose made clear, the parameters of performance defined, they instantly become a team that instinctively demonstrates all that we would consider ideally desirable behaviour. This offers us a very significant learning. A group of people become a team only when they are clear about a common purpose and aligned to a common success.

Sadly, in many organizations, we recruit people with great potential, then give them specific roles. Often, people in the team have absolute clarity and ownership of their invidividual roles, but are not too clear about what the team needs to deliver and what exactly would constitute a winning performance for the team as a whole. Even when they have the clarity, the alignment is often missing as their individual performance will be rated and rewarded over the team performance. This being so, no matter what else is done in terms of team-building, they are not able to come together or function together as a 'team'.

Going further, one of the significant insights experienced during the workshop is that when we know what the team has to deliver, when we know what we need to do as individuals towards that objective, and when we also know what the others in the team are delivering, it enables us to add value by complementing each other, and delivering 'bonus' performances.

Key learning that emerges are:

Create Goal clarity (what does the team need to do) before creating role clarity. When this is done, it is that much easier to ensure that every individual role is meaningfully aligned to the team goal.

Ensure that appraisals and rewards focus more on team success than individual performances.

Make people aware of what the others in the team have been entrusted with and what they need to deliver. This, on a platform of team appraisal and reward, will enable collaboration. If I do not know what you are supposed to do and how that is going to make us win as a team, how do I add value to what you are doing?

Once the team objectives have been achieved and the team has earned their reward, give a significant weightage to the team's (peer) evaluation of who contributed most to that success. This will position the rewards, including individual rewards in a way that does not block team dynamics.

Winning as a team itself offers a higher sense of purpose to everyone involved, rather than winning just as an individual. Additionally if this shared purpose is one that has a powerful value base and works towards a higher good for the community, the country, or humanity as a whole, then that makes it even more motivating, even more fulfilling.

"CorporateTheatre" & Orange Juice

2010-05-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

(Reproduced verbatim)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to attend the Theatre Workshop on “Power Team Dynamics” by Mr. Paul, on 24th February, 10.
If someone asked what the take-home message was and I replied that it was a great exercise on Team Building, it would be nonsense.
After a cold glass of orange juice on a Hot summer’s day if someone asked how it felt and I replied “Oh, I got a lot of Vitamin C” that would be absolute nonsense. Yes, the statement might be very true, but what I had got would also be a lot energy, hydration, fiber, fructose, anti-oxidants, flavanoids, Vit B6, Folic Acid, and more. More importantly how does one quantify the pleasure of cold juice down a parched throat, or the energized vigour soon after the drink?
Mr. Paul’s workshop can be compared to that. Yes, Team Building was indeed quite obviously there. But there was a huge participatory energy build-up, a voluntary effort to win and see the right man win, supportive camaraderie, unexpected resource utilization, elaborate attention to detail, taught by a passionate tutor, directed by all the participants, appreciative applause, handshakes, pats on the shoulders, and much more, All WITHOUT EVEN A PEN OR PAPER, let alone a PC or PowerPoint. The take-home was, as one participant rightly said, not in the mind, not in our brains, but in the (metaphorical) heart.
I am sure I speak for all the participants when I say that it was amazing to see how all of us with little or NO experience of acting did an astounding job of freely acting in front of a large audience, so that the team could win.
And hey, in case I forget (how can I), the common thread throughout was fun and enjoyment. At the end of the day Everyone felt refreshed instead of tired.
Great show!

A Very Special Client Feedback

2010-05-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

(Over the past years I have received a great deal of deeply energizing and rewarding feedback from participants and from client organizations. I have never felt the need to put them up on this blog. However, here is one feedback that is so comprehensive, and which so clearly captures the workshop experience, that I feel compelled to share it with readers. I will also be putting up some other unique comments received from participants.)

The feedback is reproduced below, verbatim. (I am leaving out the name of the client as it would unfair to include it here without first asking their permission.)

CLIENT'S NOTE REPRODUCED BELOW:

Meanwhile, please find below some quick feedback I collected from the team after the session:

“This program really gave us lot of insight and gave us a true experiential learning which brought out the individual creativity. The best part was no handouts, no presentation, no writings but still the learnings will always remain fresh in our minds.”

“This was the best demonstration of learning through fun and how well teams can succeed through fun and collaboration.”

“The session helped in team building, giving new ideas on collaboration, simplified the whole concept of team work and also helped in unearthing some latent acting talents among us..”

“The most attractive part was that it was not theoretical. The trainer was able to pass on the positive energy to the team and could maintain it till the end. It was more effective as the learning happened through small exercises. It was crisp, time bound and well organized. Altogether, it was a great experience.”

“… a training without jargon is in fact the best for it helps instill knowledge without any kind of forcing from the trainers part. The refreshing part of the session was that the learning happened through theatrics and fun.”

“Paul’s participation, freedom, and sharing added great validation for the others.”

“This is the 1st time I’m seeing participants not sleeping in the post lunch session. Also it was the first training where there was 100% participation. I will recommend this to any BU or team where there is individual brilliance, but little teamwork.”

“Very different, interactive and totally fun with wonderful experiential learning. The best training ever that I’ve attended in the last 6 years of being in IT industry. The team was definitely able to bond and develop a feeling of camaraderie. Everybody shed their hierarchy and inhibitions and made an honest attempt to benefit from the workshop.

Key takeaway will be the realization of the power of communication. We may feel that we have communicated the best we can but it will not serve the purpose if the other party involved has not understood or interpreted it differently. Also realized that we need to manage the emotions of an employee as they also will be experiencing the same emotions as we went through during the games – Excitement, anticipation, joy, nervousness, disappointment, motivation, recognition etc.”

“The Corporate Theatre was a session with terrific empirical value. The perspective of clubbing theatre and dramatics to bring out the best of expressions in people as they work in the corporate environment was very unique to learn and appreciate different facets of teaming.

Paul's abilities to connect with the audience and impress them with his acting abilities along with his ability to bring out the best in people through his natural sense of humour and insights, speaks volumes about the way the program has been packaged to cater to the needs of the corporate world. The Corporate Theatre was a wonderful learning experience.”

Workshop to Workplace - Transferring the Culture

2010-04-06T21:43:00.001-07:00

(Excerpts from a post-workshop proposal on transferring the workshop culture to the workplace. This is a response to the brief received from senior stakeholders.)

• Collaboration: Collaboration happens when every individual and function is willing to invest as much in the performance of other interdependent individuals and functions, as in their own performances. It also means being able to celebrate the success of other interdependent individuals and functions as much as they celebrate their own success. Obviously, this cannot be achieved by making people noble and saintly overnight, or by making them ‘drop their egos’. Instead, the challenge is to harness the ingrained ego-based needs of the individual and align them to the functional goals, and align the functional goals to organizational goals. This alignment can be achieved only by ensuring the following:

o Defining natural teams comprising of interdependent individuals and functions. (If my function in any way affects the performance of another function, then we are only functions. A Natural Team is a self-contained entity in terms of its performance.)

o Clearly defining the team goal – WHAT WILL MAKE US WIN AS A TEAM – and the time frame.

o Ensuring that the primary clarity and loyalty of every individual and function is towards the Team Goal. In order to create that loyalty, every individual and function must know that they can win only if that team goal is achieved. It is the responsibility of the top leadership to ensure that this primary goal, though immensely challenging, is ultimately, achievable. As experienced during the workshop, one of the fundamental rules of leadership is – “Never give a command that cannot be obeyed”.

o Creating a completely transparent Appraisal and Reward system that ensures that team performance is prioritised over individual or departmental performance. Individual star performances can and should be phenomenally rewarded, but the team must also have a major say in deciding who contributed the most towards the team’s success.

• Respect the formal structure: As experienced during the workshop, in every exercise there were clearly laid down parameters of performance with many rules that required a great deal of alertness and discipline to follow. If they were not followed, the team was penalised. In spite of that there was a great deal of respect for the rules, simply because everyone’s concept of winning as an individual was totally aligned to the team’s success. And that team success was dependant on participants following the rules.

The other element in terms of behaviour was that while there was a great deal of respect for the functional hierarchy – Kings, Generals, Dons, etc, - there was no sense of hierarchy at the level of the actor. We experienced how we can respect formal structure without letting it inhibit our freedom, our self-expression, our self esteem, or our fun.

• Role Clarity: One thing that clearly emerged repeatedly during the course of the workshop was that (Team) Goal Clarity should come before (Individual) Role Clarity. Only then can we be sure that every role is aligned to the team’s goal, while complementing the other roles. We also realised that when I was sure of what the goal was, when I was aware of the roles that others were playing, I had much better chances of adding value and adapting my role to get ‘bonus’ performances.

• Sense of Urgency: During the workshop everybody was functioning with a great sense of urgency. If someone wanted to get a bed sheet, or a table, or a chair, they did not walk. They ran. Very often you could hear people alerting others, “Hurry up. Only 10 minutes left” or “Only 5 minutes left”. During the contest, as soon as they understood what their primary actor was trying to communicate, the teams ran to take up positions. In fact, as soon as the primary actor came up, their team would be on their toes, ready to spring into action, like athletes at the starting point of a race.

• Execution Mode: Given the theatre production challenge with no formal experience, expertise, resources, rewards, and with very little time, at no point did anyone discuss why this could not be done. Clearly, they were totally into an execution mode, in an area where there was no formal experience, expertise, resources, or material rewards.

• Inclusivity Mode: Throughout the workshop, everyone was involved. Those who were not as competent as the others on a theatre platform were also roped in by the team and given roles where they also felt valued. There was a great deal of discussion, listening to each other, and taking decisions that were best for the team without ‘contradiction’ degenerating into ‘conflict’.

It is clear from the above that every single element of the culture you seek to integrate into your work environment is already behaviourally available with your people at the level of instinct and attitude. None of these ingredients need to be taught. All that is needed is the unconditional willingness of the senior leadership – the creators of the work culture – to re-create at the workplace, the environment that enabled this attitude. This would involve:

• Defining ‘Natural Teams’ – linking together interdependent functions united by the clarity of, and alignment to, a common goal and success.

• Defining Goals - There should be absolute clarity what each Natural Team needs to achieve, and by when, and within what parameters, to WIN as a team.

• Building relationships across hierarchy and functions, across the team where there is a great deal of respect for functional hierarchy without experiencing human hierarchy.

• Building trust in each other’s clarity and alignment through a policy framework that makes performance appraisals, rewards, and star performance awards, completely transparent and primarily team-based.

The process that we are now discussing cannot be done in half measure. Either we go the whole hog, or not at all. Doing it in parts could actually end up creating confusion, and will probably disorient the teams. Given the whole hearted and unconditional willingness to transfer the workshop culture to the workplace, the results as well as the rewards could be very exciting.

Creative Leadership

2010-03-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

Note: Client's brief given in brackets, and my response is given in bold.

(Benefits to the Leadership team after the training program: the program theme should focus on improving cohesiveness and team work.

• Minimise impact of "Silo" thinking among leadership team outside of their own specializations or departments)

One of the significant insights experienced through the "CorporateTheatre" methdology is how one can work very effectively with complete loyalty and commitment to one's own role and function, while at the same time aligning across functions to the larger Team (Organizational) goal.

(• Utilise strategic "Systems Thinking": In order to enable leadership team to work together more effectively and cohesively)

In so far as Systems Thinking looks at the big picture and at aligning all processes towards it, to add maximum value to internal stakeholders as well as customers, the workshop will enable participants to experience this orientation. While focusing on sub-processes, they will clearly experience the need for contributing towards the primary processes that decide the success or failure in achieving the primary objective of the Team (Organization).

(• Reframe perception so that leadership team moves from Crisis Management to High Performance Leadership)

Participants will experience their innate ability to move from one style of leadership to another depending on the need of the moment. Whether in a crisis handling mode or otherwise, they will be able to commit themselves to delivering high levels of performance. While experiencing High Performance leadership styles, they will also see the need to adapt leadership styles according to the nature of the challenges at hand, as well as the nature of the individuals that they lead.

(• Resistance to Change: Transform the resistance to change, which requires great effort to "push-in" changes, to a highly motivated situation that will "pull-in" changes for improvements, without even the need for "selling" ideas to create the "buy-in”.)

Participants will experience how to create an environment where change becomes an energizer. A natural team, which will be defined through the workshop, is always looking for a different and higher mountain to climb.

(• Cascade the process throughout the organisation and progressively build a complete Culture of High Performance, where everyone in the organisation is consistently working together to improve performance)

From the brief given, especially with reference to this last point, what you would need is a 2-day 'Leadership through Team Instinct' workshop. In this workshop we will not only experience these possibilities but also on how to facilitate a work environment where the dynamics described above become a sustainable part of the organizational culture. However, this would call for:

• the full-time participation of the senior management or primary stakeholders
• the willingness to critically evaluate the existing work culture
• the openness to radically redefine some of our existing paradigms

The Empowering Leader

2010-03-26T23:26:00.001-07:00

Kevin and Jackie Freiberg's (authors of the brilliant book, "Nuts") article, "Leaders Exposed" - Corporate Dossier, Economic Times of 12th March - has some very pertinent passages about Leadership. Here are some excerpts:

"In our business we have been influenced by some of the most admired leaders in the world. In getting to know them, we've noticed they have something in common. They're all incredibly confident people but they show no signs of ego. If anything they are far more self-effacing and interested in others than they are braggadocios and egotistical. We find that impressive and refreshing. . . .

(With such leaders) people feel like they have a voice. To have a voice, to know that your ideas count, to know that someone is listening and cares is empowering and rewarding. . . These are leaders that people love to work for, leaders who have earned the right to have a team of people striving to accomplish the impossible, their own Everest. "

Some of the insights that come through very powerfully during the 2-day "CorporateTheatre" Leadership workshop are these very attributes. The Zen parables of leadership used for enactment describes an empowering leader as the river and not as the fire. For fire is so proud, so powerful, that ultimately it ends up consuming not only everything around it, but also itself. What is left behind is a handful of ashes. In contrast, the river is so silent it can scarcely be heard. So gentle it can scarcely be felt. The river embraces the low ground, nourishes and nurtures everything in its path, yet eternally achieves the objective of merging with the ocean. At the same time, remember, the river will not tolerate any obstacle in its path towards the ocean. It realigns or redeploys obstacles. If there is a mountain in its path, it flows around it. If it cannot flow around it, it carves through the mountain.

In the same way, the empowering leader will not tolerate any obstacle in the team's path towards success. If he finds a person in the team who is not aligned or still worse, not alignable (this is fortunately extremely rare), there are 3 options - the 3 'R's. The first and most preferred 'R' is realign. If this is not possible, the second 'R' is redeploy. Put the person in a position where he or she can find purpose and alignment. If that is not possible, the third 'R' is used - remove. Remove the obstacle. He or she does not belong in the team. This is all the more important when the person who is not aligned is a high profile person. Such a person can destroy the clarity and alignment of many others who would otherwise be valuable contributors to the team's goals and success.

Like the river a confident leader does not feel the need to be seen and heard all the time. She merely defines the destination and aligns everyone towards the same destination. As the journey starts, she is comfortable and secure enough to step back and let others lead, based on who knows that part of the journey best.

Another of the Zen parables, explores how an empowering leader does not feel the need to prove that he is better or more competent than others in the team. Instead, he is the hub who gets the right spokes, puts them in the right places, harmonises their strengths by creating space around them, to make a strong organizational wheel. When the question arises as to how he manages to do this, the master in the Zen parable says, "Just like the sun nurtures the plants by giving away its light and energy, and the plants in gratitude face towards the sun, so also the good leader, having put the right people in the right jobs, gives them full credit for what they do.

By creating this environment for fulfilment and self-actualization for his teams, the empowering leader, in return, gets their undying loyalty and gratitude.

Team Dynamics

2010-03-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

Confidence and Conviction in ambiguous situations – Participants will repeatedly confront ambiguous situations with confidence, conviction, and unexpected competence. They will experience that while one must have clarity on the destination, one cannot expect total clarity about the journey. If one expects absolute clarity on the journey, one will never start the journey.

Bold and fresh ideas, and facilitation innovation – Participants will experience that generating bold and fresh ideas calls for an environment of open communication with the following elements:
 Clarity of a common goal and commitment to a common success
 Trust in one another’s clarity and commitment
 Willingness to express ideas without self-consciousness, and possessiveness about ‘my’ idea as against ‘your’ idea
 The acceptance of contradiction without getting into conflict
They will also experience that a group of creative people coming together does not make a creative team. Individual creativity expressed in an environment of trust and freedom leads to team innovation. We will also explore the nature of creativity as well as on how to facilitate innovation.

Sensitivity, humility, and respect when dealing with others – This can happen only when we can take on ‘functional’ hierarchy without getting into ‘human’ hierarchy. This means that we relate to each other as actor to actor irrespective of whether we are playing the role of the king or the slave. The workshop will explore this in great depth.

Collaborating in cross functional teams – As described in an earlier post, 'cross functional team' is a misnomer. Interdependent functions cannot be teams. They are only functions within the team. If the primary loyalty of the individuals is to their function instead of the team, it would be extremely difficult to align the various functions towards a common team goal and success.

The workshop will define collaboration as “investing in the other’s performance as much as in one’s own.” This does not happen by making people generous and noble or by ‘dropping’ egos. Rather, the process is to create clarity of the same goal and alignment to the same success. This creates the awareness that the other’s performance is important to my own success. We can only win together as a team. We will explore how to create this attitude and environment.

Encouraging Teamwork and understanding Conflict – Participants will experience that we can tap the richness of contradiction without getting into conflict. The underlying thrust of the entire methodology will be on how to enable team work at the level of the ideal, as attitude rather than as technique.

Collective Leadership, Success, and Failure

2010-03-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

The workshop will explore how to create an environment where everyone in the team takes on responsibility for leadership, not just the designated leader. We will explore how the designated leader’s job is to define the DESTINATION, and not to define the JOURNEY. Once the destination has been decided, leadership on the journey evolves according to who knows that part of the journey best. The designated leader must be able to empower the team to find situational leaders along the journey.

Another key learning will be on how to deal with failure. A team that does not know how to handle failure will not take risks, will not achieve extraordinary success. We will experience how to handle failure without becoming losers. We will also discover that success and failure can be a collection celebration or a collective learning, respectively, without negativity and individual blame games.

Moving from 'I' to 'WE' - Aligning the Individual EGO

2010-03-25T09:25:00.001-07:00

One of the obstacles when we talk about ‘Moving from ‘I’ to ‘WE’, is the question of how to make individuals surrender to the team. How to make the ‘I’ surrender to the ‘WE’. We will realize how in a typical competitive corporate scenario, asking people to surrender will only make them feel threatened and consolidate their egos even more rigidly. Instead, we will explore how to ALIGN individual egos to the team ego, by creating an environment where my winning as an individual is totally dependent on our winning as a team. In the process we will experientially define ‘collaboration’ as investing in the other person’s performance, as much as in my own performance, not because we are noble, but simply because if the other person does not perform well, I will also lose.

Trust Building in Natural Teams

2010-03-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

We will define what ‘Trust’ means in a ‘Natural Team’ context and how this can be created even among people who may not like each other or trust each other as person to person. It is practically impossible to make all 100 people in a team trust and like each other. Organizations find trust building difficult because this is what they try to do. Instead, we will experience that trust is not about trusting the other person. It is about trusting that the other person also HAS CLARITY OF THE SAME GOAL AND ALIGNMENT TO THE SAME SUCCESS as me. This can be achieved even in a few hours, unconditionally and explicitly, as we will experience. (On top of this, if everyone also likes each other and trusts each other person to person, that is a real BONUS).

Power Team Dynamics - Natural Teams

2010-03-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

One of the key experiential learnings that come from the “CT” workshop is the immense power of Synergy. How Team Energy is much more than the sum total of the individual energies. Participants will actually experience that if they can come together as a ‘Natural Team’ they can integrate instantly with a new group of people, find new competencies, create new resources, manage time, deal with change, and actually enjoy delivering excellence under a high pressure, competitive environment. We will also explore the ‘3 Pillars’ that form the platform for a natural team.

A ‘Natural Team’ is always looking for a higher mountain to climb. They want the excitement of change and challenge. The higher the mountain, the greater the celebration. Participants will experience that they already have with them all that is required to deliver excellence beyond their own expectations, and beyond the expectations of the audience (market, clients, top stakeholders of the organization).

Participants will experience that ‘functions’ are not ‘teams’. Batting and Bowling are not teams. They are merely functions within the cricket team. If my function in any way affects yours, we are only functions. The workshop will experientially explore how to create alignment and loyalty to the Team goal and success, and then to align individual and functional goals to the larger team goal.

Excerpts from Responses to Clients

2010-03-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

Clients often state specific learning objectives for the “CorporateTheatre” workshops and ask for a note on how those objectives would be addressed. In the course of replying to such requests, I have often found that the distilled learning that I have gathered from hundreds of workshops and behaviourally reinforced by thousands of participants, find expression. Even though many of these points may have already been covered in the earlier posts, I think that sharing excerpts from these notes could be of interest to those how have been following this blog. Let me repeat, this is not my wisdom, but the wisdom and insights expressed and shared consistently by over 30,000 participants since June 2002.

The next few posts are likely to be excerpts from proposals/notes sent out to clients.

Successful Careers, Happy Lives

2009-09-28T23:30:00.001-07:00

Nearly 30,000 participants have experienced “CorporateTheatre” workshops over the last seven and a half years. They have come from a wide variety of nationality, industry, hierarchy, and culture. What has never ceased amazing me is how, irrespective of their background, age, or seniority, every group in every workshop demonstrates almost exactly the same behaviour, and shares almost exactly the same insights.

In their concluding sharing of insights and experiences, almost every single participant talks about the absolute fun, enjoyment, and relaxation that they experienced, while delivering excellence using new-found competencies, under conditions of constant change, increasing challenge, and intense pressure. I have often pondered about the universality of this experience and tried to put a finger on exactly what makes this possible. I have often sensed and shared that this is the outcome of natural team instinct which manifests itself the moment we remove the blocks and expand personality boundaries. This leads to participants experiencing the 3 pillars of natural teams (described in detail elsewhere in this blog), and functioning with full attention and availability in the ‘here and now’.

Recently, however, at the very end of the book, “The New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle, I came across what could be the precise answer to the question of how delivering excellence can become actual enjoyment, fun, and relaxation.

Eckhart Tolle, best-selling author of ‘The Power of Now’, and ‘A New Earth’, and renowned thinker and teacher, has this to say in the last chapter of his book, “A New Earth”:

“THE THREE MODALITIES OF AWAKENED DOING

There are three ways in which consciousness can flow into what you do and thus through you into this world, three modalities in which you can align your life with the creative power of the universe. Modality means the underlying energy-frequency that flows into what you do and connects your actions with the awakened consciousness that is emerging into this world. What you do will be dysfunctional and of the ego unless it arises out of one of these three modalities. They may change during the course of a day, although one of them may be dominant during a certain stage in your life. Each modality is appropriate to certain situations.

The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.”

The moment I read this passage, I realised that I had found the answer to my question. The words that occur most frequently as participants share their experiences at the end of the workshop are these three words – Acceptance, Enjoyment, and Enthusiasm.

Very often, fun and enjoyment are equated with being casual, or doing ‘fun’ things like playing games, partying, etc. It is difficult for many people to accept that you can have a great deal of fun while handling very demanding challenges, observing very high levels of discipline, meeting exacting deadlines, delivering unbelievable levels of creativity and innovation, and actually pushing yourself beyond your physical and mental comfort zones, as well as your perceived competence zones. Understanding this one important truth can make a huge difference to the way we experience our lives and careers. We need not sacrifice the quality of our lives to be successful in our careers. More importantly as we go up the leadership ladder and become responsible for creating the work environment for hundreds and thousands of other people, we can create an environment where our teams can also enjoy their lives while delivering excellence under changing, challenging, and high pressure conditions. We can contribute powerfully towards making our organization, and the world around us much happier places.

While this may sound rather idealistic when put in words, the practicality of this concept has been consistently experienced and behaviourally reinforced by nearly 30,000 workshop participants.

Imagine the amazing possibilities . . . !!

Organisational Culture & The Power of Positive Affirmation

2009-08-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

In the ‘Citings’ column of The Economic Times, dated 27th August, there is a very interesting and pertinent article by James Heskett. It is titled, “Design A Better Corporate Culture”. I reproduce the entire article here as it appears in the column:

“We can learn a great deal from organisations whose strong and adaptive ownership cultures give them a powerful competitive edge. Like anything worthwhile, culture is something in which you invest. An organisation’s norms and values aren’t formed through speeches but through actions and team learning. Strong cultures have teeth. They are much more than slogans and empty promises. Some organisations choose to part ways with those who do not manage according to the values and behaviours that other employees embrace. Others accomplish the same objectives more positively.

At Baptist Health Care, for example, managers constantly reinforce the culture by recognising those whose actions exemplify its values, its behaviours, and its standards. Team successes are cause for frequent celebrations. In addition, BHC rewards individual accomplishments through such things as “WOW (Workers becoming Owners and Winners) Super Service Certificates,” appreciation cards for 90-day employees that list their contributions to their team, one-year appreciation awards, multi-year service awards, employee of the month awards, and recognition of workers as “Champions” or “Legends” for extraordinary achievements or service. Managers at all levels offer frequent informal recognition and send handwritten thank-you notes (which stand out in the age of e-mail). Those who aren’t living up to BHC’s values soon get the point.”

One of the most significant and consistent characteristics of a “CorporateTheatre” workshop is ‘Positive Affirmation’. Teams are given very challenging projects that require instant integration into new teams, very high levels of open, trusting communication, collaboration, innovation, finding and harmonising new competencies as individuals and as teams, and management of time, change, and pressure. Invariably the results are far beyond the team’s initial expectations and the expectations of the audience (client). When processing the experience, it clearly emerges that at no point did anyone in the team focus on anyone’s inadequacies, on what someone could not do. The focus was consistently on what each one could deliver. What they could not was delivered by someone else in the team. Competencies vary across individuals, but the commitment remains the same. Inevitably, every single time, every single team finds all that is needed to enjoy delivering excellence. What is of greater significance is that irrespective of what one contributed, or the role that one played, everyone feels equally valued, equally appreciated.

When the group sits together and analyses the environmental factors that enabled these possibilities, or the culture that generated the powerful and positive attitudinal behaviour, we get in touch with the importance of organisational culture. Culture always cascades from the top down, and never from the bottom up. As stated in Heskett’s article, culture does not come about from some fancy slogans put up on agency-designed wall posters or from inspirational speeches. It comes from actual behaviour patterns demonstrated by the top leadership, and from an appraisal and reward system that clearly defines and celebrates the desired behaviour, and rewards it.

I have often come across highly ego-centric managers, capable of quoting all the right slogans, saying all the right things about empowerment and ownership, whose teams are demoralised, inhibited, and highly stressed out. They ask for interventions that will ‘empower’ their teams and open up, and energize them. When such managers are told that people are naturally programmed to win and to enjoy delivering excellence and that what is needed is an honest evaluation of workplace policies, goal definitions, and leadership styles, they feel instantly threatened. Without the willingness to change their own attitudes, they expect a facilitator to do in a 1 or 2-day workshop, what they as primary stakeholders have not been able to do over years of leading their teams. It is certainly possible even in a 1-day workshop, to put teams experientially in touch with their immense possibilities to enjoy delivering unbelievable levels of excellence as individuals and as teams. However, making this a sustainable part of the work culture requires the vulnerability, and willingness on the part of the culture and policy makers to redefine some of their paradigms of ‘professionalism’ including their own personal leadership styles. While the parameters of these new paradigms and leadership styles can be explored and defined through the workshop, the willingness to change on the part of the senior leadership is critical to positive and lasting transformation. Only leaders who are secure in their own self-esteem, aware of their own competencies as well as inadequacies, convinced about and committed to their organizational vision and goals, and who have trust in the innate power and goodness of their people can really create an environment that brings out the best in themselves and in their teams.

Natural Creativity - The Attitude as Different from the Technique

2009-08-23T23:21:00.000-07:00

In an earlier article posted in February I have described how “CorporateTheatre” understands and addresses ‘Creativity’. The “CorporateTheatre” experience defines creativity as a committed, competent, and free response to the need of the moment, and not as ‘trying to be different’. When one deliberately focuses on trying to be different, it often blocks creativity and innovation.

As described in the earlier article, the primary platform needed to be creative, is to experience oneself and the world around us, including other people, as ‘processes’ and not as ‘products’. As ‘products’ this is the way I am, and this is the way I will be. I fit within specified labels. As a ‘process’, that is the way I was, this is the way I currently am, and what I will be tomorrow depends on my experience of tomorrow. I am in a state of constant adaptation and response to the moment as perceived with freedom from patterns, and with clear objectivity.

In this sense, given the freedom we are all creative. That is our true nature. And when people are free to express themselves without fear of rejection or ridicule (without self-consciousness), there is innovation. Creativity is the perspective and innovation, the tangible expression of this natural creativity.

I recently came across two striking examples of natural creativity as different from a forced effort to be different and original.

A couple of weeks ago I stayed in a new, high profile, 5-star hotel. The designs and the colour schemes were eye catching. Everything looked different and it was obvious that a lot of effort had been put in to make the ambience unusual. The furniture in the plush, spacious lobby were like sculptures and looked very inviting. However, when I sat on them, they were extremely uncomfortable. I was escorted to my room by a well attired concierge staff. Large room, soft lighting, thick lush carpet, spacious washroom with exotic fittings. And a commode which looked like a cube stuck into the wall. Absolutely square. Looked fascinatingly different. However, when I began to use them, they were painfully dysfunctional. There was no way of taking a shower without the water flowing into the rest of the washroom from the shower cubicle. The commode was so very uncomfortable that I dreaded having to use it. When I discussed this with the management, they agreed that there had been many complaints about the washroom design.

Obviously, the designer had been compelled by the desperate need to be different and ended up by being dysfunctional.

In contrast, I recently discovered a very humble product that exemplifies creativity at its best. A simple ‘Homelite’ matchbox. One night, the power went off at home, and the house was plunged in darkness. We had forgotten to turn the emergency lamp on and I went in search of the matchbox. I knew roughly where it was usually kept and I headed in that direction. As I neared the spot, I saw something glowing in darkness. To my surprise and delight, the glow came from the radium coating on the matchbox. The name ‘Homelite’ on the matchbox label had been coated with radium. What a simple creative solution for a very pertinent need.

This same attitude can also empower personal and professional relationships. Often, when we meet a person, we see not just the person and also a lot of what we have seen and experienced about that person before. We see a labelled product. Creative perception would mean that we do not use these labels. True, a person may have made a mistake, and bungled up a project or an assignment earlier. It is also possible that the person may have learned from the mistake and changed his or her attitude and skill. If we can approach the person without the labels of the past and from a fresh perspective, then there is creativity in the relationship and new and often positive possibilities open up for us as well as the other.

A creative perspective can help us experience the wisdom contained in the deeply meaningful Zen statement,

“You never step in the same river twice”.

As you step in and step out, the river flows on, and you cannot step into the same water again. We, and everything around us is in a state of flow, very much like the river. If we understand this flow, every moment is a new adventure and there is no monotony in life or in relationships.

Situational Leadership

2009-08-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

Another interesting workshop experience.

The group was half way through the workshop and well into the theatre-based contest. This contest is designed to put participants in touch with the dynamics of communication, situational leadership, dealing with success and failure, and how star performers are recognized and celebrated even when everyone is working in perfect alignment to the team goal.

We had finished the trial rounds which are used to familiarise participants with the exacting rules and discipline of the contest as well as on how to optimise performance to score bonus points. Participants were told that they had 2 minutes to decide on their ‘primary actors’ or designated leaders for the various rounds and levels. The primary actor could not be repeated. There are initial rounds at level one, then at a tougher level 2, and then finally at the extremely difficult level 3. The scoring possibilities as well as the bonus possibilities also increase with each level of difficulty. Typically, each team nominates their primary actors keeping the better actors for the tougher rounds and the best actor in the team for the all important level 3 where the winning and losing finally happens.

There were 4 competing teams. One team had the CEO of the organization – a very energetic, high profile person used to shouting out instructions in the absolute confidence that they would be instantly obeyed. During almost every break, he could be seen shouting at the hotel staff serving the food or beverages for some inadequacy or the other. He was always very visible and clearly and loudly heard.

Level one got over. The teams were more or less on par. Level 2 happened and there were some clear rankings emerging. Even so, all teams were within reaching distance of the top position. The CEO’s team was doing very well at 2nd position with only a marginal difference from the 1st team. Now came the all important Level 3. The first three teams came up and did well. When it came to the CEO’s team, he came up as the primary actor. He misread the script and the team got no score. They had now slipped to the last position.

At this point we processed the learning and then broke for tea. Before tea break I announced that there would be a super challenger round at a much higher score and that the scores of this super round would be added to the existing scores to decide the final winner. The score for this last round was such that even the last team could potentially win the contest. The teams were told that they could nominate anyone as the primary actor, even those who had led the team in the earlier rounds.

The first three teams fielded the actors who had scored full points in the level 2 or level 3 rounds, as their primary actors. They did well. There was a shift in the ranking among them. When it came to the CEOs team, again he came up as the primary actor. Once again, he did not get it right and the team ended up last.

When the final processing was done, I asked teams on what basis they had selected their primary actors for the all important Level 4 super challenger round. All teams other than the CEO’s team said that they had nominated the actor based on past performance and proven competence in this particular area of work. When it came to the CEO’s team there were a few moments of silence. Then the CEO spoke up,

“I volunteered”, he said.

There was no need to process it any further.

To use the metaphor of the journey, often used in the workshop and covered in my article on the “Leadership & Hierarchy – The Journey and the Destination”, once the destination has been decided and the journey starts, leadership must evolve according to who knows that part of the journey best. If the person who decided the destination decides to lead throughout the journey, the journey may not be effective and the team my not reach the destination as planned. An effective leader must know when to step back and enable leadership in the team, based on situational competence, rather than leading directly all the time. A capable, confident leader also does not feel the need to prove that he or she is better than everyone else in the team in every task or situation.

The Leader - Importance of Self-awareness

2009-07-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

“We have spoken with several leaders who claim to be great at developing their people, but when we interview the people they lead, we hear a very different story. In some cases, the leaders in question may be better at demoralizing than developing people. At its worst, this lack of self-awareness can lead to masses of disengaged employees, unhappy customers, and undue stress beyond the workplace”.

This quote from a Gallup Management Journal article on the book, “Strengths Based Leadership” by Tom Rath and Barrie Conchie, are very relevant. As a facilitator, I have come across many instances where the team is very competent and committed but is blocked from performing well because of the leader’s lack of self awareness.

Some time ago I worked with a senior leadership team from a multinational company. In the pre-workshop brief, one of the objectives stated was to enable the team to take initiative without fear of failure, to take on situational leadership, and to be able to express themselves freely without fear of hierarchy. The group consisted of the top management of the company including the CEO who came across as a very receptive person. During the theatre exercises she demonstrated a high level of freedom which helped to open up the group. However when it came to taking on the production projects, she would inevitably take full control of her group. This happened in every single exercise. Most the time she would be centre-stage with the group gathered in a circle around her, and she would be doling out instructions telling each person what they should do and how they should do it.

After the workshop, she again gathered the senior leaders around her and got into a conference where the constant refrain was her saying “I want . . .” Having allowed the facilitator to in a sense take on leadership during the duration of the workshop, she seemed eager to reinstate her identity as the leader of the group.

In another workshop, this time with a well known multinational bank, after a very exciting process, where a lot of insights relevant to delivering excellence at the workplace were shared by participants, including many senior ones, the head of the organization dropped in. He heard part of the final sharing and feedback from the participants who also talked about how much they had enjoyed the workshop. After everyone had spoken, he summed up,

“Now that you have had a lot of fun, it is time to get back to work. Remember that there are tough times ahead and we need to be prepared to put aside a lot of our personal priorities . . . .”

In a few brief moments he had undone a good part of what we had achieved during the workshop and invalidated the learning experience as merely fun and games. Had he been part of the process, had he respected the sharing by his own senior team members, this would not have happened.

In yet another workshop, the summing up by the participants was very deep and powerful and they expressed immense confidence in their ability to work together as a powerful team and take on tough assignments. When it came to the turn of the head of the organization to speak, this is what he said,

“All of you have said wonderful things. But, if you think of the last assignment that we carried out as a team, can even one of you tell me honestly, that you did your best?”

The team froze in stunned silence. This was in complete contrast to what they had done, experienced and shared during the course of an entire day. Without giving them the time to answer, the head went on,

“See? Not one of you can tell me that you did your best.”

He then went on to point out a whole lot of inadequacies, mistakes, shortcomings. By the end his speech the mood was one of deep depression and low energy. The group dispersed, miserable and disillusioned.

One of the essential insights that emerge from the “CorporateTheatre” Leadership workshop is:

If there is a problem in my team or organization, and I am part of the leadership, I must be willing to accept that I am part of the problem. Unless I am willing to accept this, I will neither see the problem nor be able to find the solution.

Obviously this calls for a great deal of openness on the part of the leader. It also calls for a great deal of security and self-acceptance. The leader should be able to see himself or herself as less than perfect and also to accept that she need not be better in every competency than everybody else in the team. Most importantly, once the destination has been defined, and everyone has been aligned to the destination, the leader must be able to step back and let the leadership evolve during the journey according to who knows each part of the journey best, irrespective of seniority, designation, or hierarchy.

Instinctive Values & Ideal Behaviour

2009-07-08T01:02:00.000-07:00

Something very beautiful and remarkable happened during some recent workshops. To my mind, it goes to show how when the right environment creates the right attitudes, people demonstrate great values and powerfully positive behaviour.

The first incident happened at a workshop for the senior management team of a well known telecom company.

One of the major activities is a contest that helps to deliver learning in areas like, how natural teams handle competition, how they celebrate success, and deal with failure. The contest involves one person from a team coming up, picking up a piece of paper which has the name of a character written on it. He or she then performs that character without using sounds, props, words, or dumb charades. The team members cannot talk to each other either. Whoever understands what the primary actor is doing must come up and join him or her and become other parts of the same situation. There are various rounds of this activity at increasing levels of challenge, with increasing scores, and penalties for breach of rules. As the contest gets more and more intense, the desire to whisper or in some way break the rules to make the others understand is so high, and so instinctive, that it requires a great deal of will power and discipline to play by the rules of the game.

During the incident that I am referring to, the game had reached a high level of difficulty. The primary actor from a particular team who had been chosen to lead in a tough round came up, picked up the paper, and started performance. The team waited, watching intensely and trying to figure out what their primary actor was doing. After some tense moments, when no one seemed to understand, most of them got up and rushed to join the primary actor. As the first team member reached him, the primary actor could not resist whispering the name of the character.

The competition is intense and the whisper was noticed by a competing team and they instantly cried out,

“Foul!! He whispered, he whispered . . .”

The person to whom the primary actor had just whispered raised his hand and admitted,

“Yes. He whispered. We are disqualified”

and started walking back to his seat.

There was a moment of silence across the teams as the team on the floor waited looking around helplessly, wondering what to do. Then they too walked back to their seats. The primary actor was left alone looking totally lost and dismayed. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him and his team. I asked him,

“Why did you have to whisper? Your actions were very clear and I am sure the others understood.”

His instant, childlike response was,

“I was not confident”.

At this point all the other competing teams spoke up,

“Give them marks. They deserve a bonus for the honesty”.

The team was given 50% of the points and everyone applauded.

Look at the amazing values here, as well as the learning.

• The honesty of the person who was whispered to
• The honesty of the primary actor in admitting that he was not confident
• The nobility and graciousness of the competing teams who insisted even while competing fiercely, that honesty be rewarded

In terms of learning, something very interesting emerges. If the primary actor had focussed on doing his best and trusted the team’s competence, they could have probably scored much more. His commitment to the team was very high, but his confidence in the team was low, and this led to the unfortunate situation.

The second incident happened while working with the students of a management school as part of their induction programme on the very first day of the course. This is typically a time when everyone is trying to project themselves as competent leaders.

The batch of 40 was divided into 3 different teams and each team was asked to do a theatre production with sets, props, costumes, and make up. Time given from seeing the script to performance is only 30 minutes. Obviously, there is a lot of pressure. The group has to find each other’s competencies, create resources, manage time, rehearse, and get ready to perform. In one particular team, within the first few minutes itself, one lady student emerged as the director. She went on to direct one of the most moving workshop productions that I have witnessed with stunningly powerful and evocative characterisation, emotions, period costumes, and excellent use of space. The production left the audience made up of competing teams, speechless.

What was remarkable was that the director was not visible anywhere during the actual performance. She was behind a screen with only her arms visible holding up a vital prop.

During the processing when her role as the director was explained to the group, there was a spontaneous burst of admiring applause.

Here again, there is superb example of ‘enabling leadership’. She empowered the team to deliver a brilliant and powerful performance and did not feel the need to project herself in the process. Had it not been announced, the group at large would not have known about her valuable contribution to the best production of the day. Only her own team would have known.

Such ideal value based dynamics and self-aligned leadership is not an exception. It is consistently and unconditionally reinforced as instinctive behaviour as soon as the 3 pillars of a natural team are experienced. Though the workshop is experienced on a simulated parallel platform, the tensions, the pressures, the celebration, and the disappointments, are very real. This is human behaviour, and if the 3 pillars can be captured in the workplace by appropriate team definitions, goal definitions, and the right appraisal and reward policies, the same values and dynamics can be tapped in the workplace on a sustainable basis as part of the work culture.

Imagine the benefits! Fun at work can become practical reality.

The Leadership Process

2009-04-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

(Comments on the article, “What Makes a Great Leadership Team?” by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, authors of ‘Strengths Based Leadership’, in the Gallup Management Journal dated 3rd February, 2009)

The article starts with a brilliant statement: “Individuals don’t have to be well-rounded, but teams should be”.

A prominent feature of “CorporateTheatre” workshops are theatre productions done by the participants within severe resource and time constraints. This involves competencies in the areas of acting, direction, set making, costume design, props, make-up, and even sound and light management. When you consider the fact that the vast majority of participants have never done theatre before, the output in terms of production quality is most often, stunning. When the experience is processed, it becomes very clear that while no single individual can be expected to have all the competencies required for completing a project, a committed team inevitably finds all that is needed to deliver excellence. This awakens us to a cardinal principle of natural teams – In a natural team everyone is not expected to be equally competent. What is important is that everyone is equally committed. And commitment like integrity is either 100 percent or not available. One cannot be 90 percent committed just as one cannot have 90 percent integrity.

Another relevant statement made in the article is, “Instead of one dominant leader who tries to do everything or individuals who all have similar strengths, contributions from all four domains lead to a strong and cohesive team.”

An interesting insight experienced through the “CorporateTheatre” process is that leadership is a 'wave' rather than a 'point'. If leadership of a team depends on one individual, it would not be as effective as when the entire team takes on the responsibility for leadership. To use a metaphor, probably used elsewhere in this blog, defining a destination requires person-centric leadership. You cannot have ten different people defining ten different destinations. (It goes without saying that it is the responsibility of this leadership to ensure that everyone in the team finds value and fulfillment in reaching that destination). Having defined the destination, if the same person decides to lead throughout the journey, the journey will not be effective. Along the way, whoever knows that part of the journey best, irrespective of seniority or designation, takes on responsibility for leadership, and everyone else including the person who defined the destination, enables this leadership. It is very much like the flock of geese migrating across vast distances. They fly in a ‘v’ formation. The bird in front has to take on maximum load, as the flapping of wings of the birds in front create air currents that make it easier for the birds behind. And when the lead bird gets tired, it moves back into the formation and another bird takes its place at the head of the formation.

The authors define four domains of leadership strength – Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. I am sure that a great deal of study and research has gone into these categorizations. I am also aware that they do not compartmentalize these domains. However, my experience with thousands of participants bear out the fact that when the goal is clear, the alignment is total, and trust in each other’s clarity and alignment (the 3 Pillars of a Natural Team) is unconditional, people move from one domain to another effortlessly, based on what is needed from moment to moment to take the team towards its destination.

Ingredients of Natural Teams - re-inforced by Gallup

2009-04-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

(Comments on an article, “What Strong Teams Have in Common” – The five sure signs of an excellent team – by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, in the Gallup Management Journal dated 26th March 2009)

Natural Teams are very powerful entities. For the simple reason that a natural team is so keen to be the best or to be first, that they inevitably find the competencies and create the resources to deliver excellence, under pressure, and in changing and challenging conditions. In order to create Natural Teams, the leadership must invest in creating the 3 Pillars of a natural team that has been repeatedly reinforced in various articles throughout this blog.

The article by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, authors of ‘Strengths Based Leadership”, powerfully validates the behavioural ingredients of natural teams that have been consistently experienced and demonstrated by participants during the “CorporateTheatre” workshops, irrespective of industry, background or experience.

“1. Conflict doesn’t destroy strong teams because strong teams focus on results”.
“ . . . the most successful teams are not the ones in which team members always agree with one another. Instead, they are often characterized by healthy debate – and at times, heated arguments . . . . . One reason great teams are able to grow through conflict is because they have a laser-like focus on results . . . failing teams tend to personalize disagreement, creating territorial divides that continue to grow”.

These statements brilliantly validate the experiential insights from “CorporateTheatre” as is clear from the following insights shared by participants:

The 3 Pillars of a Natural Team as defined by the “CorporateTheatre” methodology (for greater clarity click on the link and read the entire article) are:

First – Integration as ‘actors’ and not as ‘characters’

Second – Clarity of the same task and commitment to the same success

Third – Total Trust in each other’s clarity and commitment

This excerpt talks about the 2nd Pillar – “laser like focus on the results”. Once the 3 Pillars are created, participants experience that the more the contradiction, the richer is the understanding. Contradiction without ego investment creates richer understanding. Contradiction with ego investment (conflicting individual agenda instead of the laser-like focus on the same results) creates conflict. While contradiction is healthy and enriching, conflict inevitably creates unhealthy tensions, wastage of time in trying to ‘manage’ conflict, and stress.

2. Strong teams prioritize what’s best for the organization, then move forward.

“ . . . Members of high-performing teams are consistently able to put what’s best for the organization ahead of their own egos.”

While fully understanding and respecting the spirit of this statement by the authors, I consider this way of expressing the idea dangerous and probably dysfunctional. A high calibre corporate professional almost inevitably has ambitions and the desire to rise fast up the corporate leader, to become the head of an organization. While the idea of putting the organization ahead of their own egos is a noble thought as mentioned elsewhere in this blog, it is not practical. The “CorporateTheatre” experience defines this differently. We would rather say, members of high performing teams have aligned their egos and their concepts of individual success to the team’s success. If the senior leadership responsible for the organization’s objectives and culture is able to clearly define goals, the parameters of performance, and create an appraisal and reward policy that ensures that if the team wins , every individual in the team also wins in a way that is meaningful to them, and conversely, that if the team does not win, no individual can win in a significant way, this alignment is created. (For greater clarity on the appraisal and reward policy guidelines defined by the “CorporateTheatre” experience, click on the link.)

3. Members of strong teams are as committed to their personal lives as they are to their work.

“ . . . As hard as they work for the company, they seem to bring the same level of energy and intensity to their family, social, and community life.”

“CorporateTheatre” defines this as the “power of availability”. An actor on stage, if he/she is to be fully effective has to be completely available to the performance moment to moment. A good footballer, tennis player, formula racer, mountain climber have to be completely available in the moment, in the here and now of each moment, in order to deliver excellence. This availability converts very high pressure environments into fun and even relaxation. An effective member of a strong team has this ability to be completely available in the here and now at the work place with total commitment, attention, awareness, and energy. So also when they are at home, they make themselves completely available at the home with their loved ones, with the same commitment, attention, awareness and energy. They do not carry the baggage of the workplace to the home or vice-versa. Given this attitude of availability, irrespective of the time spent, each moment is so rich in quality, that there is a feeling of being balanced, relaxed, joyful, successful, and integrated.

It is deeply rewarding for me as a “CorporateTheatre” facilitator that the behavioural dynamics consistently experienced and expressed through this methodology is so strongly validated by years of study and research. The article starts with the statement:

“Gallup has been studying leadership teams for nearly four decades, and we have witnessed some telltale signs of strong, high-performing teams”.

“CorporateTheatre” participants define these insights EXPERIENTIALLY even in a 1-day workshop, proving beyond doubt that excellence is our birthright and available to us at the level of our primary instinct. All that we need to do is to remove the blocks created by ignorance of the possibilities, and obsolete concepts of ‘professionalism’.

Instinct for Excellence

2009-04-07T04:04:00.000-07:00

On the 4th of April, I worked with around 90 senior leaders of a leading telecom company. These 90 people were from different circles and the workshops were part of their visioning and strategy meet. The initial plan was to work with the entire group as one batch, with 2 facilitators. We thought we would break them into 2 groups for the initial sessions which would be handled simultaneously by 2 facilitators and then bring the whole group together for a combined process with 1 facilitator.

Unfortunately, just a couple of days before the workshop, the other facilitator could not make it because of a personal priority. This left us with only one option – split the group into 2 batches, and do two, three-and-a-half hour sessions with just one facilitator. This can be extremely demanding for one facilitator, in terms of the physical energy and mental alertness required. There was also the added concern about how much of an insightful and transformational experience could be facilitated within such a short time, for such a senior, experienced participant group.

In spite of expressing my reservations, the client insisted that we go with this option. The first session for a batch of 47 participants started around 9 am and went on till around 12.30. The second batch of around 37 people joined us for lunch and the second session started at 1.15 and went on till 4.30 pm.

At the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, yet deeply satisfied. Both groups delivered outstanding performances. More importantly, the sharing of experience was comprehensive and covered almost every aspect of team behaviour – integration, collaboration, communication, creativity, managing time, managing change, resource optimization, finding new competencies, and enjoyment of challenge and pressure. In just three and a half hours!!

Obviously all these elements could not have been acquired or learned in three and a half hours. The fact of the matter is simply, that all these attributes are already there, abundantly available at the level of primary instinct in each and every one of us. This is a fact that has been consistently demonstrated and repeatedly reinforced workshop after workshop, year after year, participant after participant, without exception and without dilution. Owing to the environment that we experience, some of us make it part of our natural behaviour at the workplace, many of us don’t. Creating the environment (the 3 pillars of a Natural Team) that enables the manifestation of this natural instinctive behaviour among their people is the primary responsibility of the top leadership. If this is done, the teams will find the competencies, create the resources and commit to delivering excellence for the sake of excellence.

Simply because no individual wants to fail, no team wants to be second.

Tata's Nano - 'Response' versus 'Reaction'

2009-03-24T10:10:00.001-07:00

Watching the Nano launch on TV yesterday and going through the news coverage in the papers today, I was struck by how this was a very clear example of the difference between ‘Response’ and ‘Reaction’, as experientially defined through the “CorporateTheatre” methodology. Standing quite unassumingly on the stage among the cars, Mr. Tata spoke very softly. He did not need to bring in any style or glamour or showmanship. The car said it all. He explained how he had wanted to give the Indian people who rode with their families on two wheelers, exposed to the weather and slippery road conditions, a car that would be safe, protect them from uncomfortable weather conditions, and which they would be able to afford. Today’s papers had interviews with auto drivers, vegetable vendors, and bus conductors who said they would like to buy the car. One person said he could take his family to church in the car. Another elderly person said he would like to buy one for his daughter so that she could drive to college more safely than on a two wheeler.

The papers also featured interviews with other well known car manufacturers. On being asked what is their strategy to compete with the Nano, one of the major players said that they would wait and see how the market reacts to the Nano and then plan their strategy.

Two very distinct attitudes are reflected here. Tata sensed a certain need. The aspiration of the ordinary man who does not earn much, who can ill afford a car, riding with his family of 4 or even 5 precariously perched on a bike or scooter, exposed to the sun or getting drenched in the rain. He would have seen, as we all have, how, when they have stopped at a traffic signal next to a car, one of the children look into the car and see a child like him or her, sitting comfortably inside air-conditioned comfort. I have experienced this in the days before I could afford a car, and known the pain when I saw my child gazing into a car and then looking away. She did not say anything. But I could sense how she too would have liked to enjoy the same comfort. Though Tata would probably not have directly experienced something like this, I am sure from the way he spoke, that he was sensitive enough to understand and caring enough to do something about it. He responded. There was a need. The need dictated a solution. He became the instrument through which the solution found its expression. A brilliant example of the well known Zen dictum of the “arrow shooting itself”. There is a target. There is a bow and arrow. The archer is merely the medium through which the arrow finds its target. Ratan Tata looked outward, saw the need, sensed the solution and went about making it a reality. And in that response there was unparalleled creativity.

(It is also to be noted here that the engineering and design competence was an essential platform for that creativity to manifest itself. Unless the archer is adept at archery, the arrow will not find the target. It is only a singer who has mastered her art that can evolve a new genre of music. It is only a painter who has mastered painting who can evolve a new style.)

In contrast, the other auto manufacturer is reacting. He is not concerned with the need. He is not looking outward. His concern is not ‘how can my product or strategy offer a better solution to the need of the end user’. It is more to do with ‘what would be the best way to make a game plan that would help me to retain market shares and profitability, or better still, improve it’, in the light of the new market dynamics and customer expectations created by the Nano launch.

Something tells me that in the long run, Tata’s large-hearted responsiveness will generate far more profitability, value, and success than the narrow self-seeking reaction of his competitor.

Thoughts on Leadership

2009-03-16T03:48:00.000-07:00

(Comments on the article, “What Followers Want From Leaders” – a Gallup Management Journal Q&A with Tom Rath and Barry Conchie, authors of Strengths Based Leadership – 8th Jan 2009)

On going through this interview I was struck by how organizations and managers struggle with leadership and performance issues, simply because some of the concepts may not have been clearly defined or understood. I intend to revisit some of these concepts from a “CorporateTheatre” perspective. It is important to bear in mind that these concepts and definitions have evolved from the workshop experience and have been consistently reinforced through hundreds of workshops and across thousands of participants. In that sense they can be considered as valid as any formal study.

Trust:

GMJ: Your book says that followers have four basic needs, one of which is trust. How do leaders build trust, and why is it so important?

Tom Rath: I think trust is primarily built through relationships, and it’s important because it’s the foundational currency that a leader has with his team or his followers.

According to the “CorporateTheatre” experience, Trust is the 3rd Pillar of a Natural Team. (For details please refer to my article on 'Natural Teams' in the same blog.) It need not necessarily be about relationships. It is about trusting that the other person has the same clarity about the same goals and the same commitment to the same success as me.

This involves various elements. One, the goals have to be clearly set. The destination that we need to reach as a Team or an Organization has to be absolutely clear. The journey need not be clear at the time of starting. That clarity will emerge and get redefined often as we proceed. If we expect as much clarity about the journey as about the destination, we will never start the journey nor reach the destination.

Two, it has to be ensured that everybody, irrespective of their role or designation has clarity about the destination. This is the 2nd Pillar of a Natural Team. Defining the mission, and setting the goals are important aspects. Everyone should be clear about what we need to achieve as a Team/Organization over the next 5 years/1year/quarter/month. On this basic platform, each individual must be aware of what is their responsibility on the journey, and also willing to take on additional responsibilities based on situational competence, clarity, creativity, or energy.

Three, everyone involved should have the absolute confidence that once we reach the destination, everyone will win in some way that has meaning and value for them. The reward system should be clear and ensure that individual success, team success, and organizational success are well aligned.

And most importantly, everyone must have complete trust in the other person’s clarity and alignment. This is the function of the appraisal policy. Inappropriate appraisal and reward policies can totally break down a team or an organization into a group of fragmented, stressed out, self seeking individuals.

“CorporateTheatre” workshops also throw experiential light on the fundamental guidelines which need to be part of the appraisal and reward policies to enable trust and alignment.

Compassion:

GMJ: You wrote that compassion is important to followers, but a lot of leaders are hesitant to become emotionally involved with their subordinates for fear that it will compromise the work relationship.

Rath: There’s an amount of risk in building a personal relationship with a subordinate . . . . . .
. . . . . if people don’t have close friendships on the job and if they don’t have a supervisor or leader who really cares about them individually, there’s almost no chance that they’ll get engaged in their work . . . .

“CorporateTheatre” considers two words as no longer relevant in today’s workplace. One is ‘subordinate’, and the other is ‘colleague’. We’ll take ‘colleague’ first. In the old days, when people worked as bus conductors or bank managers from 10 to 5 and after 5 they were poets, actors, painters, dancers, social workers, etc., they had ‘colleagues’ at work and ‘friends’ outside. This was perfectly fine as work was only for livelihood. Fun was after work. One did not need emotional fulfillment from workplace relationships. That need was amply fulfilled by relationships outside.

In today’s scenario where most of us spend most of our alert, energized hours at work, and after-work activity is the occasional outing or eating out, or a movie, we need to find our emotional fulfillment at the workplace itself. There is very little time or energy left after work. The need today is no longer for ‘colleagues’, but for ‘friends at work’. Rath is absolutely right in saying that unless people get this emotional nourishment of relationships at the workplace, it is almost impossible for them to get engaged in their work.

At the same time, the word ‘subordinate’ contradicts this thinking. True, hierarchy is a very real and even essential part of corporate functioning. So also in ‘theatre’. One actor plays the King. The other actor plays the slave. There is very rigid functional hierarchy. The actor playing the slave will not dare to sit on the King’s throne. If they do, the play is lost. At the same time neither actor considers the other superior or subordinate. At the level of the actor there is no superior or subordinate. Understanding this at the level of instinct and attitude, and not just intellectually, is the foundation for compassion. The moment I feel superior or subordinate to someone, compassion no longer exists and I become incapable of either giving or receiving compassion. Compassion for my subordinate borders on patronizing. Creating this relationship at the level of ‘actors’, and not just ‘characters’ is the 1st Pillar of a Natural Team.

Reaction v/s Response:

Conchie: . . . . . . . Yet the reality is, when I put those scenarios to them, they couldn’t wait to react. It’s almost as though they had a visceral need to respond . . .

According to our understanding, and validated by ancient wisdom, reaction and response are two completely different things. Response arises from the creative impulse of being completely available and attentive to the present moment, with all of one’s freedom, energy, responsibility, and commitment. Reaction, on the other hand, arises out of past baggage, fears, expectations, anxiety. To use a metaphor used by the sages,

‘I am hungry. I see food before me. I eat to satisfy my hunger. I am responding.’

‘I am no longer hungry. I see food before me that I like. I eat because I like the food. I am reacting.’

Response is perfectly natural and healthy. Reaction, most often can be counterproductive. My liking for the food comes from the past baggage of having eaten the same food before, or having heard or read about it. There is also the anticipation of the remembered pleasure.

In a responsive state, competencies, creativity, and wisdom far beyond what we carry in our conscious minds become available to us. And when an entire Team or Organization of responsive individuals proceed towards a common destination, the destination as well as the journey becomes immensely enjoyable, fulfilling, and continuously offers new and exciting possibilities, far beyond what had been initially planned for or envisioned.

While this may sound somewhat idealistic, remember that these possibilities have been consistently reinforced in every single workshop. We are dealing here with universal, pure, instinctive human dynamics for growth and excellence.

The illusion of Monotony

2009-03-13T01:48:00.000-07:00

One of the questions that come up regularly during workshops is,

“How can we keep up our energy and excitement high, doing the same routine job every day?”

Often, the very same people, especially those who have been through a number of workshops with us, ask,

“How can you keep up your energy and freshness, doing the same workshop, year after year, month after month, day after day?”

My answer is simply, and truthfully, that I am not doing the same workshop day after day. Each workshop, though similar in structure and content, is a new experience. In fact, when I find participants coming in who have been through earlier workshops, I tell them,

“Let me assure you that you are going to go through exactly the same workshop, word for word. Let me also assure you that you will find it as interesting, insightful, and enjoyable as the first time.”

At the end of the workshop, these participants invariably agree that this assurance has been validated.

As long as I am experiencing each moment of each workshop without the baggage of the past and the anxiety of expectations, each and every moment of each and every workshop is different. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog, there is an old Zen saying,

“You can never step in the same river twice.”

The river is flowing all the time and each time you step in, you are stepping into a different body of water. If we are sensitive and alive to the newness of the river, each step is a fresh experience. So also, we ourselves and the world around us are in a constant state of flow. Even as I write this, old cells are falling away from my body, new cells are forming, new neuro-chemical connections are taking place in my mind, new thoughts forming, new ideas germinating. As long as I allow myself to be in a state of adaptation and response, I experience myself and the world outside as a PROCESS and not as a PRODUCT. As a ‘product’ I am the same today as I was yesterday and will be the same tomorrow as I am today. As a ‘process’ I have the freedom to be different today from what I was yesterday. I have the freedom to be different at this moment from what I was a moment ago.

Getting into this ‘process’ state requires that we function with our full availability and attention in the present moment. Theatre, as mentioned in my previous article, “Facilitating in the Here & Now”, is a very direct way of experiencing our ability to function with great competence, energy, and enjoyment in whatever we do, moment to moment.

If going through the same activity continuously were to be monotonous, people like Sachhin would not be enjoying their cricket decade after decade. Musicians, painters, dancers, all are engaged in the same activity, but no song is monotonous to the singer as long as she puts her heart and soul into each rendition.

Monotony has nothing to do with what is outside of us. Rather monotony stems from our internal reaction to what is outside. If no two leaves on millions of trees can be exactly the same, if no two fingerprints across millions of people can be exactly the same, if no two snowflakes can be exactly the same, how can two moments, much less, two hours, and still less, two days be exactly the same? What we need is the ability, already inherently available with us, to see that difference and respond to each different moment with attention and spontaneity.

Workshop after workshop, it has been continously reinforced that if we create the 3 pillars of a Natural Team, the Team as well as each individual in the team experience themselves, as well as everything around, as ‘processes’, and demonstrate the ability to respond accordingly. This happens instantly and instinctively.

Facilitating in the "Here & Now"

2009-03-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

One of the important principles involved in “CorporateTheatre” facilitation is:

‘The Facilitator processes only what has happened in this workshop here, today’. Unless the behaviour or insight has been part of the participants’ experience in this workshop, it may not be relevant to process it. Force-fitting an insight or learning from yesterday’s workshop, no matter how brilliant it may have been, into today’s workshop may not be effective.

This obviously requires that the Facilitator is totally alert and sensitive to whatever is happening during the course of the workshop. The interaction among the participants, the changes they make along the way, the sharing, the constantly changing leadership patterns – all this has to be observed and quickly related to the learning objectives. While doing so, it is important that the insights come as far as possible from the participant’s experience and sharing, and not from the facilitator’s ‘discourse’.

This is very similar to the actor’s process. Often, during the performance, something happens which may not have happened during the rehearsals or during earlier performances. If this change has come out of the instinct and impulse of the actor, working within the framework of the character and the situation, then it can be a defining moment where the performance goes beyond the rehearsals. This is where real ‘Theatre’ happens. However, in order for this defining moment to be carried into the play so as to lift it beyond the mundane, both the initiating actor as well as the responding actor have to be completely in the present.

While we often hear this concept of being in the present, or being in the ‘here and now’, explaining what it means or describing how it feels can be extremely difficult. There is a Zen story, which like all Zen stories, seeks to prod the listener into experiencing the ‘profound’ through the simplest of imagery. To use the often repeated phrase, Zen stories are like ‘the finger pointing at the moon’. If the seeker gets stuck with the finger, he misses the moon. While being guided by the finger to look in the direction of the moon, the seeker has to look beyond the finger and see the moon for himself.

The story is about a man being chased by his enemies who want to kill him. As he runs for his life, he falls off a cliff into the deep ravine below. As he is falling, he manages to grab hold of a bush. For the moment he feels safe as the bush is far beyond the reach of his enemies who stand on the ledge helplessly looking down at him and screaming for his blood. The man suddenly realizes that the bush is slowly getting uprooted and in a few moments, he is going to fall into the ravine below. He looks down and sees a tiger looking up at him, growling in hunger. At that moment the man sees a wild flower blooming next to his face, and exclaims, “What a beautiful flower!” In spite of a dreadful past and a seemingly terrible future, the present moment becomes extremely blissful.

On stage, during a performance, the actor sometimes finds himself distracted. Some disturbance in the audience, a messed up movement or dialogue, the anxiety about whether the complex scene coming up next is going to work well. If the actor gives in to this distraction, the energy of the performance is diluted. A technique that I use to focus during such situations is simply this. Listen to the other actor, or do whatever you are doing, with total attention, as if you are hearing it or doing it for the first time. In an instant, I find myself back in the present, enjoying the performance moment to moment, finding the rhythm, and new possibilities. Inevitably I find that even while delivering exacting performances, this puts me into a state of comfort, relaxation, and great enjoyment.

The parallels to facilitation as well as life are obvious. A piece of music becomes enjoyable to the extent to which it can engage us in the listening by putting aside all other thoughts. An intense game of football, or even a video game become that much more enjoyable to the extent it brings all our energy and attention into the present moment. As the ancient sages have taught us, the past and the future exist only in our minds. We exist only in the present. If we can live with that presence, we can enjoy all the wildflowers that bloom along the way, moment to moment. All our energy, our instinctive competence, and our attention becomes available to us all the time, in whatever we do, making each moment and every activity that much productive and enjoyable.

Facilitation - "Possibilities" v/s "Solutions"

2009-03-03T03:41:00.000-08:00

One of the most common words heard in corporate parlance is the word, ‘solutions’. Corporate professionals, consultants, training organizations, often talk about offering ‘solutions’. This presupposes that there is a problem and we need to find a way out of it – a solution. The “CorporateTheatre” methodology approaches facilitation from a very different perspective. We do not look at merely enabling participants to find solutions to problems. Instead, the focus is on experiencing and optimizing the immense ‘possibilities’ that are already instinctively and abundantly available within the individual and the ‘natural team’. (For a definition of ‘natural teams’ please visit my article on the subject.) Having experienced these possibilities to deliver excellence and enjoy it under changing and challenging conditions, at the level of the ideal and as primary instinctive behaviour, we then explore, how far these possibilities are being experienced in the workplace. If the sharing indicates that these possibilities are not being experienced as powerfully at the workplace, we then explore where the blocks could be, and how we could work towards removing the blocks. To my mind, this is a far more positive approach.

When briefing us on workshop objectives, clients often ask whether we would be customizing the workshop. The answer, which may seem rather casual or maybe even unprofessional to someone who has not experienced the workshop, is that we do not need to customize. As long as the objective is to experience the immense and infinite possibilities of the human team to enjoy delivering excellence under pressure, there is no need of customizing the workshop. Across the hundreds of workshops and thousands of participants, the behavioural dynamics, and what is more, the sequence in which it is expressed has been exactly the same. That is why we have the absolute, unshakeable conviction that we are dealing here with core, primitive, universal human dynamics that do not depend on the participants’ nationality, or industry or experience. Being so, they are that much more relevant to any team learning objective. This insight is reinforced when we hear teams from diverse backgrounds sharing after the workshop, that the workshop touched upon the core values of their team or organization.

At the same time, where the objective is to experience learning in a specific area of behavioural dynamics like communication, or when the learning has to be connected to a specific function like ‘sales’, or ‘human resource’ management, there is scope for some degree of customizing to make it more relevant. However, this customizing is more in the processing of the activity rather than in the structure of the workshop.

'Healthy' Competition & Star Performers

2009-02-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

This is a concept that is often misunderstood - that ‘healthy’ competition can mean a toning down of aggression or diluting the ‘killer instinct’. Not at all.

In “CorporateTheatre” workshops, there are some exercises where the group is divided into teams and compete with each other. These are theatre-based contests and involve scores and ratings. One team comes first and one team inevitably ends up last. There are no ‘material’ rewards. Yet the contests are extremely intense, with teams fighting for points, questioning the scores, and even, as has happened on a few occasions, surrounding the facilitator threateningly, insisting on getting a higher score for their own team’s performance, or lowering the score for a competing team. The competition is intense. There is unbridled celebration when a team scores or wins, and genuine and painful disappointment when a team loses.

At the same time, we see something strange happening during the course of the contest. This is not a rare occurrence, but happens in almost every single workshop. Even when competing intensely, when any one team delivers an extraordinary performance, everyone, including the competition bursts out in applause. There have even been occasions where a competing team insists on a higher score for another team that has delivered an outstandingly brilliant performance. When this behaviour is processed, 3 significant learnings come through regarding a ‘natural’ team’s approach to competition (for the definition of ‘natural’ teams, please refer to my article):

1. At the level of excellence, there is no competition. Excellence demands that the team is putting in all their energy, commitment, competence, resourcefulness, and passion into the task at hand with complete availability and alignment. (Creating an environment where this seemingly ideal behaviour becomes instinctively possible is the entire thrust of the “CorporateTheatre” methodology.) Here the benchmark is excellence and not someone else’s performance. It is like a master singer who is so completely involved in the song that there is no time or need to benchmark against another singer. It is understood here, that this ability to completely flow with the process becomes available only when the technique has been mastered. Like a driver, who can enjoy the drive totally only when he/she no longer has to focus on the technique of driving. Once you have the expertise, you are enjoying the movement of the car, the hum of the engine, the constantly changing traffic flow and pattern, the scenery flowing past, and the music playing on your system.

2. A good team’s success does not depend on another team’s failure. If your team’s success depends on another team’s failure, your success is not within your control. You have to make the other team fail first and you have no control over that. Instead, when you can applaud the excellence of your competition while focusing on delivering excellence and being the best, then your success is more in your control. What is more, you are now open to learning from the excellence of your competition, and those tools, techniques, and attitudes become available to you and gets incorporated into your own process.

Star Performers: Another interesting aspect of these contests is that the level of difficulty keeps increasing. Starting with a ‘trial’ round, they move up to Level 1, which is fairly easy/difficult. They then proceed to Level 2 rounds which are still more difficult. And finally to Level 3 rounds which are extremely difficult, in terms of the acting skills required, the creativity of communication, and the alignment to each other’s roles. At each level of difficulty, the team has to decide who will lead them and the leader cannot be repeated. In the process of selecting the leaders for higher levels of difficulty, the team instinctively decides who their star performers are, reinforcing the point made in my earlier article – that while competition is instinctive between teams, within the team there can be only collaboration. Competition within a team irredeemably destroys the environment for excellence that is characteristic of a natural team. This behaviour also reinforces the learning described in detail in my article on “Leadership & Hierarchy - the Journey and the Destination". When the team has a major say in deciding who the star performers are, the star performers as well as the team get equally motivated. Else, the stars may get motivated, but the rest of the team, very often, gets de-motivated.

Having done hundreds of workshops, and actually experienced the instinctive behaviour of thousands of participants, it never ceases to amaze me, how every behavioural trait that we so desperately seek to materialize in the workplace, through costly and laborious interventions, is so instantly, consistently, and universally available, at the level of our primary instinct. All that we need to do, as stakeholders of organizational objectives and culture is to create the 3 pillars of a natural team as defined in an earlier article in this blog. While I may have stated it rather simplistically here, it is possible to create these 3 pillars if we are willing to critically evaluate our existing situation, (primarily our team definitions, goal setting, and appraisal and reward policies) and look at creative solutions calling for, if required, a redifinition of our paradigms.

There is no individual or team or organization that does not want to succeed or deliver excellence. There is no one who does not enjoy the pressure of challenge or the excitement of change. These are natural to us. We recruit people who are competent, qualified, and eager to be champions. The only thing we need to do to ensure that we help to remove the hurdles and obstacles that block this inherent urge to excel.

“CorporateTheatre” is a simple, direct, totally experiential, and very enjoyable way of understanding this urge, of practically seeing the blocks created mostly by obsolete concepts of professionalism, and of exploring ways of removing those blocks.

Pressure v/s "Stress"

2009-02-19T04:32:00.000-08:00

One of the common queries that we face when discussing a proposed workshop is, "Will you be touching upon how to manage stress?" Our response is, "Yes. Participants will experience how to handle high levels of pressure without getting stressed out."

From the experiential perspective of "CorporateTheatre", 'managing' stress is like 'managing sickness'. It might me more productive to think of 'managing' health, rather than sickness. Managing sickness assumes that sickness is our given state and tries to find ways of getting things done in spite of being sick. When you look at managing health, we work on the fundamental conviction that health is our natural state, and how do you enjoy and sustain it, without falling into sickness, which should at best be an unfortunate and occasional aberration.

In a typical "CorporateTheatre" workshop, participants are subjected to high levels of pressure in terms of:

delivering new competencies
creating new resources
handling very challenging deadlines
managing constant change of environment
the need to constantly re-adapt and re-align, and
conforming to extreme levels of discipline

Strange as it may seem till it has been actually experienced, participants deliver powerful output under the above conditions, and actually ENJOY the process.

It would be stating the obvious when I say that none of us will ever be in a worthwhile corporate environment where there is no challenge and pressure. But whether that challenge and pressure becomes "stress" or "celebration" depends on the environment that we create, and the attitude that we bring to it. Pressure does not create stress. It is our reaction to pressure, often fostered by the environment that we experience, that causes stress.

During my tenure in the Army, I did a course in mountaineering at the High Altitude Warfare School, in Kashmir. A mountaineer in the high mountains, as everyone knows even if they have not been at high altitude, is under tremendous pressure. When negotiating a tricky rockface, or a slippery ice covered slope, or a crevice-ridden glacier, one small mistake, one slip in concentration, the slightest breach of discipline, can convert an exciting adventure into tragic disaster. The demands on physical and mental endurance is extremely high. Yet, there is no mountaineer who says that mountaineering is stressful. On the contrary they say, mountaineering is fun, and actually, relaxation.

To take another example, anyone who has been on stage waiting for the curtain to rise and the show to start, knows the intense fear, anxiety, tension that the actors experience. Often, audiences tell us after a play, "you guys seemed to be having great fun!". Absolutely. But not in the way most people think. If they had peeped in backstage before the show started they would have seen actors hugging each other, reassuring each other, comforting each other, breathing hard, exercising, trying to give each other courage and confidence. You will see some actors trying to recollect their lines, one last time. You will probably find another actor running to the toilet, just one more time, before the show starts. This may sound like an exaggeration, but after 40 years of actually experiencing theatre, I will vouch for it - it has been medically proved that an actor on stage goes through the physical symptoms of a severe accident victim. (Please don't ask me for medical journal reference. I came across this a long time ago. But go ahead, ask any serious actor.)

Yet no actor says theatre is stress. On the contrary, probably every actor who has continued doing theatre will say that it is one of the most challenging, yet most enjoyable activities that one can engage in.

Take any other demanding activity like any international sport, formula racing, athletics - the intensity of pressure can be very high, without causing stress.

From the wisdom of the participants, some of the factors that emerge as major contributors toward creating stress at the workplace include:

competition within the team. Between teams competition is natural, instinctive, and intense - for the simple reason that no team wants to be second, irrespective of the material rewards. However, within a 'natural' team (please see my earlier post on 'natural' teams in case you haven't) there can be only collaboration. This lack of competition within the team in no way dilutes the intensity of the commitment, or the passion to deliver excellence beyond perceived possibilities. Competition within a team creates extreme self-consciousness and this immediately, inevitably, converts pressure into stress.
lack of trust in each other's clarity and commitment. You would have, if you have read the earlier posts, seen that the 3rd pillar of a natural team is "everyone has absolute trust in each other's clarity and commitment." Lack of this trust can cause extreme stress. Words and actions can be misunderstood and misinterpreted, creating pockets of polarised and conflicting energies.
lack of integrity. By integrity, we do not mean just honesty or not fudging accounts. What we are referring to is the original meaning of integrity - as a state of integration between one's values and perceptions of what is good and right, with one's behaviour. If my behaviour is in conflict with my beliefs, I can be under stress. There is a certain disconnect within myself that is always keeping me in a state of constant self-criticism, restlessness, and distraction. This can be extremely stressful. In this condition, I could be lying down, vacationing, watching a movie, but will rarely be in a state of real relaxation.

"CorporateTheatre" gives experiential insights into all these aspects. In a 2-day "Leadership through Team Instinct" workshop, participants after having experienced and demonstrated their ability to take on intense pressure without getting stressed out, also analyse the environment and the attitude that enabled this. They explore how to recreate the same environment and attitude at the workplace with appropriate team definitions, goal setting, and appraisal and reward policies that facilitate positive collaboration within teams, while promoting healthy competition between teams.

The concept of 'healthy competition' is also defined and explored and the insights gained will be covered in a future post.

Emotions & The Workplace

2009-02-17T20:34:00.000-08:00

In a comment that I received yesterday, one of the readers of this blog asked whether I would be writing about 'managing emotions'. I said I would, because "CorporateTheatre" offers very deep and relevant insights into the role of emotions at the workplace. Interestingly, in today's Times of India, in their column, "The Speaking Tree", as well as in the supplement, 'Ascent', there are some very pertinent thoughts on the subject.

The 'HI!5' column in 'Ascent', features an interview with Stephen C. Lundin Ph.D., author of the best selling 'FISH'. The FISH Philosophy advocated by Dr. Lundin, professes exactly what "CorporateTheatre" helps people experience - that it is possible to have high pressure workplaces with constant Change, increasing levels of Challenge, resource constraints, demanding deadlines, exacting levels of excellence, and still have FUN. It also helps people experience that FUN and extreme levels of DISCIPLINE are not mutually exclusive, and can co-exist.

To the interviewer's question, "How have you followed this discipline in our life?", Dr. Lundin offers a very profound answer:

"People ask, "how can I have fun when things are so bad?" A few years ago, my daughter was killed by a drunk driver. After weeks of deep grief, I had choices to make. How would I continue with such a heavy heart? Would I ever speak again? And then i realised no matter how bad things were, I was alive. And not only was I alive, but I was now my daughter's legacy. The FISH! Philosophy is free. It honours life. It is a source of energy which leads to productivity. And it creates an environment that fosters innovation; an environment of natural energy."

This answer contains much profound wisdom about managing emotions. First of all, he says, that he allowed himself to experience weeks of deep grief. In many tribal cultures, when a loved one dies, the system allows for the loved ones to go into deep mourning so that the grief can be experienced, expressed, and then, dropped. In modern, so called 'sophisticated', 'professional' environments, emotion is often seen as undignified. The emotion that should be expressed therefore, gets suppressed and manifests itself in many other unexpected ways. Wise counsellors tell us that when a person is in deep grief, don't analyse or explain why the person should not grieve, "because after all, we are all going to die some day or the other", or "God knows what is best for us", etc., etc. The kindest and the most meaningful that you can do is to just hug them, or hold them, be with them, and let them cry, or pour out their grief.

I remember reading the story of a 4-year old who came back home after spending a long time with an elderly neighbour whose wife had just died. When the little one's mother asked her what she had been doing at the old neighbour's house, she replied that she had been sitting on the old man's lap. The mother asked, "And what did you tell him?" "Nothing", the child replied, "I just helped him cry".

The next step that Dr. Lundin describes is the awareness that he was alive, and the realization that he was now his daughter's legacy. He drops the grief with all the weight of the past memories, and moves directly into the present. "I am alive". This moment is different. This moment is all there is. This moment is all that there will be. Simply because the past and the future exist only in our minds. We are never anywhere but here, now, in this present moment.

In the column, "The Speaking Tree", there is a marvellous article by Simanta Mohanty - "Sorry, Champ. But This, Too, Shall Pass". He talks about the recent Australian Open Finals where Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer, and Federer wept holding the runner's up trophy, and about how that expression of emotion, opened up a thousand hearts to this man's pain, vulnerability, and brilliance. It also talks about how Nadal expressed his own feelings as he received the champion's trophy and how he apologized to Federer. Seemingly such unprofessional behaviour from hardened professional champions. Yet, in the perception of hundreds of thousands of people, it lifted the champions and their performance to a higher platform of performance, beauty, and deep and lasting relevance.

To quote from the article, "Their rivalry is already being hailed as one of the greatest ever in the game, but that did not stop Federer from weeping openly at his loss. He was not afraid to show his wound to his great rival, to tell him that all his sacrifices in preparing for the tournament had come to naught. He did not keep a brave face. Sans ego, the vulnerable Federer touched a chord in all of us. Nadal not only saw the wound, he felt it." (Communication, from the "CorporateTheatre" perspective is powerful only when the other person experiences what you are experiencing.)

Simanta Mohanty goes on in the same article to share an Osho story of a king who asked a rishi for a powerful talisman. The rishi gave the king a ring containing a folded slip of paper and advised him to open it only when faced with the direst of situations for which there is no seeming solution. Years later, when the King found himself in a terribly difficult situation from which there seemed to be no escape, he remembered the talisman. On opening it he found these words, "This will also pass". And sure enough it did. And so it does with the toughest and most painful situations that all of us go through.

As Dr. Lundin realised, the solution was to drop the past and move into the present, "I am alive". This moment is available. To tap the rich new possibilities of this moment, I need to make myself completely available.

To use a Theatre metaphor, the actor plays many characters, or one character with many different and often acutely intense emotions. While the character is experiencing and expressing the emotion in all its intensity, the actor is detached from the emotion. When this scene is over and the next scene starts, the detached actor moves into the next emotion with the same freedom and intensity. If he carries the baggage of the past emotion into the current scene, the character is diluted and the actor is not effective. To quote again from Simanta's article, "Events and emotions in our life stay alive only in our memory. What remains is the one who experiences, unmoved, and unmovable, the one witness, the Presence within us."

The ancient sages, called it "Saakshi Bhava" or the 'Witness mode'. The way to tap the richness of emotion and yet not get adversely affected by it is to relate to the witness within us, which is who we really are.

Leadership & Hierarchy - the Journey and the Destination

2009-02-10T21:18:00.002-08:00

In an excerpt from Finding Your Leadership Strengths (by Tom Rath and Barrie Conchie), published in the Gallup Management Journal of Nov 2008, I noticed a very significant statement:

"We have spoken with several leaders who claim to be great at developing their people, but when we interview the people they lead, we hear a very different story. In some cases, the leaders in question may be better at demoralizing than developing people. At its worst, this lack of self-awareness can lead to masses of disengaged employees, unhappy customers, and undue stress beyond the workplace".

In a "CorporateTheatre" workshop, when the group is divided into Teams and given a script, based on which they need to do a production within a given time, two clearly distinct leadership styles emerge. One style is where the group gets together, discusses the script, allot or take on different roles and responsibilities and then begin to work, improvising, enhancing, and fine tuning as they go along till the last minute. Very often, as they go forward, if they notice the other team doing something interesting, they adopt the idea for their own production and add value to their own process. By the end of the allocated time, when they have finished their performance, the team as well as their audience marvel at the outstanding quality of work, which is most often far beyond their initial expectations.

In this case, there is no rigidly defined leadership role. Each person takes on responsibility for leadership depending on who has the maximum clarity, creativity, or energy in a given task at a given time. Even in a certain task, you may find that the leadership passes from one person to another without anyone trying to hold on to it, or grab it. Everyone's focus is on what is best for the team and on how best to get the task done. In most cases, once the right environment for excellence has been set, this is the leadership style that emerges, instintively. We also notice that energy levels, enjoyment, and morale is very high throughout the process and the production.

The other style of leadership often manifests itself when there is someone in the team who has done some theatre before, and the team is aware of this fact. More often than not, this person who has some experience of theatre is expected to take on the 'direction' of the play. Taking charge, this person, starts allocating roles, and telling the others what to do. Even if the 'leader' does not want to dominate, many of the others in the team look up to him/her for suggestions. One can see that as people keep coming to the 'leader' for suggestions from time to time, he/she begins to get pressurised, feeling compelled to give suggestions and solutions thinking that it is expected of them, as an experienced theatre person. Inevitably, the end production is not as effective as the other group's. Whereas, in the first style, the ideas, perspectives, and creativity of every individual is tapped and enriches the process, in the second case, it is mostly one person's idea. This can be severely limiting. The level of enjoyment is much lower, and so is the energy.

The first leadership style is possible only in an environment of clarity, collaboration, and trust, as facilitated by the 3 pillars of a natural team, defined in the earlier posts.
From the first style, some very clear concepts of effective leadership emerge:

It is accepted that no team or organization can function without a functional hierarchy. There has to be a designated leader or leadership. The role of the designated leadership is: To define the destination and to ensure that everyone in the team has clarity of the destination. More importantly, everyone in the team must by aligned towards reaching the same destination. This alignment, as defined in earlier posts, comes only out of the realisation that reaching the destination along with the team within the given time, will make me a winner. Conversely, I also know that even if I reach the destination, and the team does not, I cannot become a winner. Thereby, not only is everyone keen to reach the destination. Everyone is equally keen that everyone else in the team also reaches the same destination.

Once the journey starts, let leadership evolve based on who has the maximum clarity and familiarity with that particular part of the journey. If the person who defined the destination decides to lead at every step of the journey, the journey may not be as effective as it can be. There may be others who know the places that you touch as you go along, better than you do. If they are allowed to lead, the journey can be much more enjoyable, much more effective. If they are not given the opportunity to lead, and they realise that they know the place better than the compulsive leader does, it can lead to severe frustration and demoralisation.

In a natural team, leadership is not person-centric. It is team-centric. The team is the leader and the designated leader is the enabler of team leadership.

Another interesting learning that comes through very powerfully in the workshops is that, in a natural team, no one focuses on what you cannot deliver. Instead, everyone celebrates what you can deliver and as you deliver what you can with all your commitment and energy, someone else delivers with equal commitment and energy, what you cannot. It is amazing, how, in all these hundreds of workshops and thousands of participants, not once has a team been unable to deliver performances beyond initial expectations in spite of the resource constraints, time constraints, and perceived competency constraints, without material rewards. Focussing on each other's strengths and celebrating them adds much more positive energy than trying to work on each other's weaknesses, no matter how noble the motive may be, of helping the other person. Competencies can be conditional and may vary but commitment has to be consistent and unconditional.

It goes without saying that it takes a lot of self-confidence and inner strength and security on the part of the leader to define the destination, create the alignment, and then step back into the team and let the team lead based on situational competence. A lot of this strength and confidence comes from the environment that is created in terms of the 3 pillars. And that, primarily, is the task and the responsibility of the top leadership.

The 3 Pillars of a Natural Team - Reinforced

2009-02-10T21:18:00.001-08:00

One of the mistakes that managers often make is when they talk about the 'Team' being more important than the 'Individual', or about how 'We' is more important than 'I'. While this is true from a philosophical value perspective, and certainly very noble, very few people will actually buy these dictums even though they may seemingly accept it. The reason being that, in a corporate environment, unlike an ashram or a monastery, no one has come to 'surrender'. Instead, most people want to keep rising in the corporate hierarchy and become CEOs, or at least heads of functions as soon as possible. So also, 'team' is only a concept. You cannot touch the 'team'. What you can touch, and interact with is only the 'individual'. A group of individuals, aligned to a common goal and a common success, (2nd pillar of a natural team) with complete trust in each other's alignment (3rd pillar of a natural team), become a powerful Team.

Dr. Michael O'Connor is a recognized thought leader, executive coach and founder of Life Associates, Inc. He is also the co-author of "The Leadership Bridge Program (Situational Leadership II & DISC). In his article - CULTURE RULES !- he explains the need for alignment, very well. In fact he reinforces all the 3 pillars defined in my earlier post on Natural Teams.

"Organizations that do a poor job of uniting their people* to execute the business vision and mission tend to slow themselves down by strategizing like maniacs and dragging most of their people along for the ride. Companies that emphasize clear, strong, and effective culture don't have to pull their people along**. Their vitality energizes and re-energizes the people, who in turn, propel the company forward to continuing success. It can also be helpful to envision culture as the hub that holds the spokes of the wheel together. Strong cultures are those where people share a high level of commitment to the same clearly defined set of prioritised business values*** required for the ongoing success of their organization, and united to achieve their organization's vision and related strategies or goals . . . . "

Note how all the 3 pillars are covered in this statement:

* "uniting their people" - the 1st pillar. Bonding happens only when people experience each other beyond their roles, designations, seniority, and hierarchy. When we carry this baggage we are 'characters'. Characters, like characters in a play can be in intense conflict (like assassin and victim or generals at war) and have very clear cut and rigid hierachy (like king and slave). However, irrespective of the hierarchy or conflicting nature of their roles, at the level of the actor, there is no conflict or hierarchy. In fact each actor does their best to help the other actor to perform.

In a play that we are currently performing across the country, I play the role of a writer who goes to an Afghan hotel. The other characters in the hotel are locals, and some of them are obviously tough, rough, thieves, robbers, murderers. A beautiful dancer enters and entertains the gathering. The clientele is very excited and delighted by the performance and throw money to the dancer. The writer also wants to throw some money like the others but finds that he has been pickpocketed. He accuses the people around for having taken his wallet and violence erupts. Item by item, the writer is stripped and pushed and kicked around.

During the performance, the audience senses intense violence, aggression, fear. But as actors, each one is trying to make it look as real as possible and doing their best to make sure I am not hurt. On my part, I am doing my best to ensure that they do not have to pull their punches to the extent that it looks contrived. At that level, without losing the intensity of, or commitment to the individual conflicting roles, every actor is helping the other actor to perform as well as possible.

Organizations and Teams need functional hierarchy and even functional confrontation. But once bonded at the level of the actor, this does not become human hierarchy or conflict.

** "don't have to pull their people along . . " A manager who is able to create the 3 pillars of a natural team, moves from 'managing' - (making people work), to 'leading' - (making them WANT to perform), and from there to 'enabling' - (where the designated leader becomes the facilitator of excellence, and the team becomes the leader based on situational competence, clarity, creativity, and energy.)

*** " . . share a high level of commitment to the same clearly defined set of prioritized business values required for the ongoing success of their organization . . "- the 2nd & 3rd pillars - Everybody has clarity of same task and commitment to the same success, and complete trust in each other's clarity and commitment. In other words, everybody is aligned to the same goal and the same success. This alignment happens only when I know that if the organization/team wins, I win. If the organization/team does not win, I cannot win. As mentioned in the earlier posts, this is the primary challenge of the top management, along with the HR stakeholders - to clearly define and communcate across all levels, the common goals that will make the team/organization win, in the short term as well as the long term, and to create an appraisal and reward system which ensures that the individual's and team's concept of winning and success is in perfect alignment.

Given a culture where these 3 pillars exist, the human team, or 'pack' is programmed to win. Once they become a natural team, excellence and winning is its own reward, simply because no 'Team' wants to fail. No 'Team' wants to be second. Once this culture is experienced, the team will find new competencies, create the resources, manage time and change, and enjoy challenge. "The higher the mountain, the greater the celebration".

The Challenge of Inspired Leadership

2009-02-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

In today’s scenario, everyone is a skilled, talented professional in their own right. Anything less will not get one an entry into a good organization. This being so, the need for self-actualization through the workplace is much higher than in the past. If one does not experience the scope of fulfilling oneself, the talented employee will inevitably look for and find other pastures. Another feature of contemporary corporate reality is that there is the acute need to deliver excellence, as a matter of survival. Individuals, teams and organizations have to consistently deliver excellence in an environment of constant change. This calls for two things – high levels of creativity, and an environment of FUN. No one has ever delivered excellence in a field that they did not love, or in an activity they did not enjoy.

The challenge before today’s Leader/Manager therefore is:
Facilitating an environment where each member of the team experiences an inner compulsion to deliver creative excellence, out of loyalty to the team as well as a commitment to one’s own standards of excellence. Through a process of inspirational leadership, the manager must create a culture of bonding, trust, and fun, that allows for adventure and competent risk-taking without the fear of failure.

It has been repeatedly and consistently experienced during the course of the workshops that 'fear of failure' is a misnomer. A more appropriate definition would be the 'fear of being unfairly blamed for failure'. When you set to climb a high mountain, there is no guarantee that you will succeed. When you set out to play an intense game of football or tennis, there is no assurance of success. So also, when you work for months on a new play and perform it for the first time, there is no assured certainty that the audience will like it. Yet, people set out to take on the toughest of challenges with very high possibilities of failing. If they win, the celebration is that much greater. If they fail, they become stronger, and wiser, and very often more integrated, and try again till they succeed. The difference is, in all these cases, when the commitment is total, and everybody has trust in each other's commitment, there is no blame game. Failure or success is a collecting experience - a collective celebration or a collective disappointment.

In many corporates, the appraisal and reward policies are such that it creates the possibility of being individually held accountable for a collective failure. This creates acute self-consciousness, which as mentioned in an earlier post, converts the simplest of pressures into stress. Instead of celebrating each other's excellence as is instinctive to a natural team, one feels threatened and insecure by the excellence of the other. 'Team' becomes only a label. There is no Team and no teamwork. Just a group of unintegrated individuals, looking out only for themselves, going through the pretence of working together. There are a lot of presentations but no communication. Many training programmes, but little learning. Many "fun" activities, but little enjoyment. Many years of working together, but no integration or bonding.

The irony is that all these desired behaviours are instantly, instinctively, and abundantly available, the moment we create natural teams. This has been proved consistently, year after year, team after team, workshop after workshop, without exception. All we need is to open up our personality prisons and policy cages to explore new ways of looking at the immensely rich and powerful possibilities that are already available.

Desire & Ambition

2009-02-10T21:12:00.000-08:00

They are complimentary in many ways and there are areas of overlap. Ambition is fired by desire. If my ambition is to become the Prime Minister, I am motivated by desire for the perceived benefits of being a Prime Minister – fame, power, authority, etc.

At the same time, desire is born out of internal impulses of pleasure and gratification. These may or may not be within the realms of possibility. For instance, a short person may desire to be tall. A person with physical inadequacies may desire to be a glamorous superstar. A penniless, illiterate may desire to be King and have all the wealth, glamour and power it would bring.

Ambition on the other hand is desire tempered by reality. Desire becomes ambition when there is a possibility of acquiring the desired goal. Like an executive who has the ambition of becoming a CEO, or the director of his own business house.

Both desire and ambition, when tapped in the right way can be great motivators. Both trigger passion, and because of it, energy and effort.

Ambition often requires identifying the right desires that will contribute to the achievement of the goal and putting aside desires that may divert one from the goal. For instance, the executive who has the ambition to become a CEO cannot afford to give in to the desires for pleasure like frequent partying, drinking etc. He may desire an attractive colleague of the opposite sex in his office but will put aside this desire to project a professional image. He may sacrifice the desire for weekend bashes to acquire a higher qualification. In this he is deferring the gratification of certain immediate desires for achieving the long-term desire for growth, power, and wealth.

Both ambition and desire have positive as well as negative possibilities. Desire can often lead to overindulgence and ineffectiveness. Ambition without sensitivity and values can lead to manipulation and cruelty. Tempered by sensitivity and wisdom, both can be very powerful and complimentary motivators to great achievements, success, and happiness.

CUSTOMER ORIENTATION & SALES MANAGEMENT

2009-02-10T08:54:00.000-08:00

As addressed through "CorporateTheatre"

The primary attitudinal ingredients required for Customer Orientation are: -

Sensitivity – Genuine respect and concern for the person who seeks to buy my product or service. This arises out of a sense of relatedness and humility and the understanding that just like me everyone else is the centre of his or her universe. Sensitivity also calls for the ability to listen and experience the other person not only through his/her words but also through the energy level, body language, and mind state.

Understanding the ‘buying’ process – Two people coming in to buy the same product may be motivated to buy for totally different reasons. Experiencing the need of the customer as he/she experiences it requires high levels of creativity, and knowledge about the various elements that go into the buyer’s process.

Understanding the ‘selling’ process – This involves dropping all ‘selling’ techniques and responding to the buying process experienced, with the appropriate offering in terms of our product/service/time/attention/concern – whichever may be appropriate. Handled right, the buyer experiences not only the satisfaction of getting the product or service but also experiences a positive ‘buying’ transaction, that could often be the single most powerful differentiator between our offering and our competitor’s.

Passion – Unless I am convinced, and genuinely excited about what I have to offer, my energy level and body language will communicate it to the other, irrespective of the words I may use. Passion is the most powerful factor in motivating a positive response in another person. Just like a musician has to tune his instruments, we need to fine-tune our instruments of communication. These include our facility with the language, our facial expression and body language, and our attitude and sensitivity.

Enjoyment – Unless I enjoy every interaction with the other, I am not going to deliver excellence. No one has ever achieved excellence in any field without enjoying it. This involves being able to experience each situation with all my energy and attention and without bringing in ‘baggage’ from elsewhere. It also involves a certain detachment where I am watching myself like the actor observing, intensifying, and enhancing the character that he is creating on stage. This will help me to delink ‘human’ hierarchy from ‘functional’ hierarchy and not get negatively influenced by a transaction that does not go as I expect or desire.

Sales Management demands a deep understanding of the above processes and about the individual attitudes and team culture required to deliver these processes effectively and in a way that serves the overall objectives of the organization. It involves facilitating an environment that empowers people, integrates the team, generates continuous learning and growth, and offers a sense of adventure and fun. Such an environment can create a platform of “collaborating” rather than “competing” towards excellence.

2009-02-10T06:20:00.000-08:00

APPRAISING & REWARDING PERFORMANCE

One of the most important factors affecting the team environment and consequently Team performance, is the appraisal and reward system. An inappropriate appraisal and reward system can create acute self-consciousness and make members within a Team compete with each other instead of collaborating. The good performance of one person causes insecurity in others. This severely and adversely affects the entire process of Communication, Creativity, Delegation, Collaboration, Time Management, and the ability to manage change. Moreover, this environment converts the smallest of pressures into Stress.

According to insights derived consistently from the “CorporateTheatre” experience, the base platform for measuring performance should be Team Performance.
It is therefore important that the Team definition is clear.

To use a metaphor, Alpha Sporting Club is not a Team. Within Alpha Sporting Club there can be a cricket team, a football team, a basketball team. They are different teams simply because the parameters of performance are different and the performance of one team does not affect the performance of the other team. Whereas, in a cricket team, batting bowling, and wicket keeping are different functions within the same team. The performance of one affects the performance of the other. Batting cannot win when bowling loses or vice versa. It is surprising, that in many contemporary, high profile organizations, functions within a team consider themselves as teams and each member’s loyalty and accountability is primarily to the function, often at the cost of the actual team.

As defined by the “CorporateTheatre” experience, if the Team loses nobody gets rewarded - no matter how well they have individually 'bowled' or 'batted'. No performance is relevant in the long run unless the Team or the organization has achieved its primary objective, and its subsidiary objectives in the short term. (Obviously this requires that the subsidiary objectives are well aligned with the primary goals.) If the Team achieves this objective everybody gets highly rewarded irrespective of whether they have individually 'scored' or not in that particular 'match' or 'season'. Over a couple of cycles of appraisal, this will ensure that the Team weeds out the non-committed far more ruthlessly than a 'boss' can do it. This is instinct and happens all the time even in street/colony teams, even among insect teams, animal teams. Only those who can and want to contribute, are tolerated by a natural Team.
Once a Team has achieved the objective and got highly rewarded, it is the Team who appraises each other, based on individual competence AS WELL AS COMMITMENT. From this Team rating (360 degrees) individual performance is measured and rated. When the Team does the rating, there is no perceived unfairness or injustice. It is not one person's appraisal. And unless a Team is 'suicidal' the rating will be ruthlessly fair. If not, they realize that ultimately everyone loses.

Once individual appraisal has been done based on what the Team perceives as each one's contribution, the 5 or 10 or 20 (whatever be the yardstick) top rated contributors are declared "stars" and they get hugely rewarded. It is therefore, the Team that decides the stars for each performance period - month, quarter, year, etc. The stars know that to remain stars the Team must be convinced of their continuing contribution and that it cannot be taken for granted. So also everyone in the Team knows that if they contribute more, they can also become stars. Naturally, everyone would like to become a star for the recognition as well as the rewards involved. Everyone would like the Team to note their performance, and not perform for just one particular appraiser or ‘boss’.

Power Communication

2009-02-10T00:25:00.000-08:00

Power Communication for Power Leadership
Communication is as much the responsibility of the receiver as it is of the giver. In that sense in a communication transaction, both are 'communicators'. The Giver's Clarity, Creativity, Freedom, and Commitment are important. Equally important is the Receiver's Commitment to understanding, and the receiver's Freedom and Creativity. The workshop will address how to create this attitudinal platform on the part of the giver as well as the receiver. Participants experience that once this platform is created, Communication can be very powerful and transformational, irrespective of voice, vocabulary, or gadgets.

Communication is not about the other person hearing what you say, or seeing what you present. It is about how much they 'experience' what you yourself are experiencing and expressing.

The following areas are addressed experientially:

Voice Modulation:
Voice modulation ensures that the delivery of the content is inspiring and exciting. This again is not a technique. Voice modulation comes from simple exercises which are used to train actors to use their voices. In addition to this, one must be able to experience and express the content. The more powerfully and intensely the actor 'experiences' the character, the more intensely will the audience experience it.

Body Language (Non-verbal communication)
Communication becomes interesting for the receiver when the giver is interested in, and passionate about what they are delivering. Additionally, the giver must have the physical freedom to express that passion non-verbally. It has been proved that MORE THAN 80% of the punch of communication is in its non-verbal aspect. Participants experience that very powerful body-language skills are already available abundantly with us at the level of primary instinct. All we need is to find the freedom to use it.

Dealing with inhibitions and self-consciousness:
Inhibitions come from self-consciousness. Interestingly, nobody drops self-consciousness. Actors with decades of experience are still self-conscious. The way to handle self-consciousness and the consequent inhibitions that rise from it, is not to fight self-consciousness, but to accept it as part of the performance and move beyond. Fighting self-consciousness is like fighting the darkness. Go into a dark room and do all the fighting you want. The darkness does not go away. Instead of fighting the darkness, light a matchstick, and the darkness disappears. Participants experience how to shift the focus from themselves and how they are communicating, to the receivers, and how much they are understanding. This is the actor's way and it is provenly powerful and effective.

Learning:
By the end of the workshop, Participants would have experienced Power Communication, and their ability to be Power Communicators, where their audiences will experience, rather than hear. They are equipped with simple actor's exercises which if practised individually or in groups, for even 15 to 20 minutes a day will constantly develop and enrich their voice, vocabulary, and their power to add emotional richness and excitement to their presentations. We do not deal with specific techniques like how to make slides, or how to dress. However, once the attitude is right, the techniques will evolve on their own, and participants will be empowered to evolve their own techniques which ideally suit their own style, the content, and the nature of their audiences.

Duration:
3 days.

Batch Size:
Preferably not less than 15 and 20 at the absolute maximum.

Additional Settings:
In addition to the Settings and Layout and the material given in an earlier post on the subject, we would additionally need a good videographer with a high definition video camera (professional quality), and professional quality mikes, speakers, and recording and playback facility on the 2nd and 3rd day. This would include a high resolution multi-media projector, with a minimum brightness of 3000 ansi-lumens and a good screen.

Creativity - Concept Note

2009-02-09T23:55:00.000-08:00

Based on our actual workshop experience, "CorporateTheatre" addresses Creativity as an 'attitude', and not as a 'technique'. We do not look at Creativity as “thinking out of the box”, or being original, or being different. All these mindsets could end up actually blocking creativity. What you need at the moment may be “in the box”. Deliberately looking outside may blind one to the possibilities that may suit the current need, and is available in the box itself. Similarly, a forced attempt to be different may end up like a teenager rebelling for the sake of rebellion.

Instead, we look at Creativity as a “competent and spontaneous response to the need of the moment with energy, commitment, and most of all, FREEDOM”. Here, freedom refers to being free from past baggage, from the way things have been done in the past. (Past experience in itself can be valuable provided it does not combine with an egoic stance. Experience with ego becomes 'baggage'. Experience without ego becomes 'wisdom'.)

In order to experience this freedom, one must first of all perceive oneself as a ‘process’ and not as a ‘product’. As a product, I am confined within a set cage of perception and reaction. As a process I have the freedom to be different now from what I was a moment before, different tomorrow from what I am today, based on what I experience differently. As is very well put in Zen thinking, “You never step in the same river twice”. Once you have stepped out, the water flows on, and when you step in again, you are not stepping into the same water. So also, one is never in the same moment twice, never in the same reality twice. Once we look with creative eyes and perceptions we see each moment, each situation, each relationship differently, always offering new challenges and new possibilities.

Individuals who EXPERIENCE (not just intellectually understand) the above become aware of their creativity and become capable of manifesting it. However, a group of very creative individuals need not necessarily become a creative Team. There are certain fundamental requirements for a Team to become creative even if all the members of the Team may be individually creative. (These requirements are covered in the post # 2 on 'Natural Teams')

Corporate Theatre uses a two-day process to put participants in touch with their individual as well as Team creativity. The uniqueness of this process is that participants are first empowered to drop their “personality prisons” and experience their freedom as processes. They then go on to manifest high levels of individual creativity and team innovation against increasing levels of challenge. After they have experienced these possibilities, participants get in touch with the ingredients that enabled them to achieve and deliver what they did. They are invited to explore ways in which the power of what they have already experienced can be transferred to their life situation, whether it be at work or elsewhere.

Creativity is a key ingredient in our basic and most popular offering – the “Power Team Dynamics” module. In today’s scenario no Team or individual can be effective unless they can constantly adapt to change. Managing change requires very high levels of creativity – firstly to see the change that is happening, and next, to see the new possibilities that change offers, as well as to identify the new approaches that one needs, to respond competently.

Client List

2009-02-08T20:34:00.000-08:00

“CorporateTheatre” – CLIENT LIST (Partial)

Bharti Airtel
HCL Technologies
Cognizant
Polaris
Hyundai
Ford India
Bharat Petroleum Corp
Madras Refineries
Standard Chartered Bank
Scope International
Bank of America (Cont Sol)
DE Shaw
Foster Wheeler
Barry Wehmiller
Borg Warner
Virtusa
Verizon
Amway
IBS Software
Visual Graphics (Mckinsey)
TAFE
Magnetic Meters
EXL Service
CII
WeP Peripherals
PHI Seeds (Dupont)
Amrita TV
FirstSource
Cairn Energy
Maersk Logistics
Centre for Social Initiative in Management
Amrita School of Business
International Flavours and Fragrances
Amrita Institutions
Great Lakes Instt of Management
Vazir Sultan Tobacco
Young Entrepreneurs Organization
RMZ Corps
GMR Group
Malayala Manorama
Gulf Oil
Apcom Computers
Accenture
Texas Instruments
GE Money
Redington
Murugappa Group
Sanmar Group
TITAN
TANISHQ
Ogilvy & Mather
HSBC
Taj Hotels
Idea Cellular
Vodafone
First Advantage
Ashok Leyland
Bates 141
Chola DBS
Max New York Life Insurance
DB Operations International Pvt Ltd (Deutsche Bank Group)
Tata Teleservices
Reliance ADA
IFMR
Inautix
Beroe Inc
CPA Global
The World Bank
Indian Rayon (Aditya Birla Group)
Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals
Bharti Hexacom
Reliance Energy
US Technology India Pvt Ltd
RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) India

Leadership

2009-02-07T22:46:00.000-08:00

Leadership Concepts as Experienced and Demonstrated by Participants:

"CorporateTheatre" recognizes 3 levels of Leadership. The first is 'managing' - making people perform. The next and higher level is 'leading' - making people want to perform. And the ultimate and most effective level is 'enabling' - where the Team becomes the leader based on each member's situational competence, creativity, and energy. At this level, the designated leader becomes the enabler of Team Leadership. "CorporateTheatre" addresses Leadership at this third level of Enabling. Ultimately, we need to empower and enable people. If they are well managed and motivated, they will find the competencies, create the resources, manage time, and enjoy delivering excellence. If people are not well managed and motivated, all the available competences, resources, and time can go unutilized.

Coping with Change: "CorporateTheatre" enables people to experience themselves, as Individuals and as Teams, as 'processes' and not as 'products'. This is achieved by empowering them to drop their limited personality boundaries and experience the immense possibilities that already exist. This includes the ability to actually see the newness of each moment, each task, and to constantly adapt creatively to a constantly changing environment. As it is said in Zen, "You never step in the same river twice". One must have eyes to see the flow of the river without categorising and labling. Once this is experienced, change becomes an energizer.

Role enrichment: Participants experience that every role is significant and that, irrespective of designation or hierarchy, anyone can add value to the Team. They align their individual roles to every other role to add value to each other with absolute clarity of a common goal and alignment to a common success. They also realise their ability to take on functional hierarchy and functional conflict without experiencing human hierarchy and human conflict.

Non-material Motivation: The natural programming of a natural Team is to win, irrespective of the material rewards. Participants experience their ability to form natural Teams. Once this happens they discover that winning is its own reward. Given reasonable material comfort and security, they push themselves beyond their comfort zones and perceived competence zones in an environment of total collaboration and trust.

While these concepts may sound idealistic at this point, the "CorporateTheatre" Methodology puts Participants in touch with these concepts at the level of primary instinct. We do not discuss these points theoretically. Instead, they are processed after participants have actually demonstrated them as primary attitudinal behaviour.

Settings, Layout, Orientation Note, Ground Rules

2009-02-07T20:44:00.000-08:00

Theatre is a spatial tool. "CorporateTheatre" workshops, therefore, require certain specific settings and layout. These are absolutely important and cannot be compromised without diluting the impact of the workshop. However, they are very basic, available in almost every good hotel, resort, or convention centre, and easily manageable, once the right hall space has been identified. The details given in this post include:

Picture of the Hall Layout
Settings and Material Requirement

Orientation Note to Participants

Ground Rules for the workshop

Settings & Material:Settings Required for “CorporateTheatre” Workshops (for up to 35 Participants)

Hall size of MINIMUM 2000 SQ FT of uninterrupted space. This is important. The location of the hall should be such that it does not disturb other activities at the venue, as there is bound to be a good deal of noise and activity. There will be considerable physical activity and unless the weather is very cool, air-conditioning is essential. Fans will not serve the purpose as they drown out voices and make communication difficult. In case the weather is really cool, and air conditioning is not needed, there should be provision for adequate ventilation. Ceiling height should be at least 10 ft or more. The right settings add considerable value and richness to the overall experience.

Mattresses and Bolsters to be arranged linearly along the walls at one end of the hall. (Please refer to the picture of the hall layout.) Roughly one mattress to two participants, and one bolster or pillow each, with a few extra thrown in. These should be covered in clean white sheets and covers.

25 stackable chairs to be kept stacked in the far corner

4 medium sized tables also to be kept tucked away in the far corner

1 medium sized table to be kept in the hall for keeping training material

One light stool or center table near the table on which the training material is kept

30 sheets of white, thick craft paper (flipchart size), and 20 new whiteboard marker pens – 5 red, 5 green, 5 blue, and 5 black.

3 staplers with stapler pins, and 3 rolls of 1 inch (width) cello tape, 3 pairs of big scissors

Scribbling pads and pens/pencils (around 20)

One 12 inch scale – plastic/wood/metal

5 medium sized soup bowls

15 additional white bed sheets to be kept folded along with the rest of the material

2 cordless mikes of good quality

I flipchart board to be readily available if needed, but not to be kept inside the hall.

Bottled drinking water (not glasses) to be kept inside the hall. All catering should be outside the hall.

Floor, if carpeted, should be thoroughly shampooed/vacuumed so that people do not experience discomfort or dust allergies. If not carpeted it should be cleaned well. Participants will be using the floor a lot, to sit on, lie on, and occasionally roll on, if they feel like it

2 large, clean dust bins

IMPORTANT: It is important that the Facilitator’s accommodation is also arranged at the venue.

Note to Participants

Dress Code: Absolutely Informal. Wear something loose and comfortable that will allow sitting, lying, or rolling on the floor. Ladies are advised to avoid Saris as they inhibit free movement.

Bring nothing with you - no notebooks, pads, or pens. Note-taking is strictly forbidden.

Footwear to be left outside the hall. Along with footwear, participants are requested to leave adult personalities, seniority, designations, and hierarchy, outside. Whatever is needed from among these can be retreived on the way back after the workshop.

Bring cameras along. You will catch yourselves and each other in amazing postures and costumes and with unbelievable expressions that you may find difficult to replicate afterwards. You will want to preserve them for posterity and show it to parents, spouses, children, and grandchildren down the years. However dont expect them to believe it is YOU !!

Ground Rules for the Workshop:

“CorporateTheatre” is a very enjoyable process of getting EXPERIENTIALLY in touch with your immense possibilities as Individuals and as Teams, to deliver excellence under pressure, change, and challenging conditions. It has been used by participants at all levels of management to address serious learning and transformational objectives. In order to optimize the invaluable time and energy that you will be investing in the workshop, we need to observe the following ground rules.

ONLY PARTICIPANTS, NO OBSERVERS – non-participant observers will make others self-conscious and this could be a block to their experience.

FULL-TIME PARTICIPATION – as we will be working with Team Dynamics, a participant leaving halfway through the workshop can create a vacuum that could adversely affect the group energy.

ONCE THE WORKSHOP STARTS, NO ONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO JOIN IN – the first 20 minutes are critical towards creating the right mindset among the participants. Those who miss this initial session could end up disrupting their own process as well as the group’s. We do not mind giving a grace time of 10 to 15 minutes before actually starting the workshop. If we wait longer than this, we will have to rush through the process and dilute the impact for all involved. This would be unfair to the organization that is investing in the exercise, as well as to those Participants who have come in time. It is painful for all concerned to turn away a person even when they are late. However, in the overall interest of the group as well as the process, we have no alternative but to do this.

CELL PHONES CAN BE USED ONLY DURING THE BREAKS – We fully understand and respect the fact that all of you are handling critical assignments. Nevertheless, in order to make the workshop effective, we need your full attention and availability. In case you are handling some critical assignment where you have to be on call, it is better for you as well as the entire group, to attend the workshop some other time when you are more available.

Natural Teams

2009-02-04T21:09:00.000-08:00

A typical "CorporateTheatre" workshop does not use any notes, formal presentations, projectors, or handouts. Participants take back what they experience. Once experienced, like cycling, swimming or driving, it becomes a part of the experiencer. One may not swim again. That is a personal decision. But ten years later, when you hit the water, you know you have not forgotten swimming. In numerous programmes and workshops throughout my own corporate career, I have got bundles of handouts which I never looked at afterwards. Worse, I realised that I was paying less attention to the process, thinking that I could always go through the handouts later. As a facilitator, I therefore took the decision that I would do my best to create a platform for directly experiencing the learning rather than talking or hearing about it.

All the same, often, during the course of the workshops, as concepts are explored and redefined, participants have expressed the desire to get some kind of handout that could capture some of the very exciting insights that were experienced and shared, for future reference, as well as for circulation among Team members. I will be using this forum to share those insights and how they were experienced and defined. As these insights contain the distilled wisdom of thousands of participants with considerable experience and expertise, readers may find them relevant and useful.

While going through these concepts and definitions, kindly keep in mind that they have come out of experiencing and not from a conscious, deliberate attempt to create a new concept or definition. What is more, these have been powerfully and consistently reinforced over hundreds of workshops, with participants from various backgrounds that represent almost every segment of industry or hierarchy.

To start with, let me share the definition of a "Team":

Team: A Team is a group of people who have the following essential attributes:

Integration as 'actors' and not as 'characters'. Once bonding has taken place at the level of the actor, people can take on functional hierarchy and even functional conflict, without experiencing human hierarchy or human conflict. For instance, one actor plays the role of a King cruelly mistreating his slave. Another actor plays the role of the slave. The King abuses the slave, beating and chaining him. At the level of 'characters' there is hierarchy and conflict. There is even respect for the functional hierarchy. The actor playing the slave will not sit on the King's throne. However, at the level of 'actor' neither actor feels 'superior' or 'inferior'. At the level of the actor there is no hierarchy and no conflict.
Clarity of the same task and ALIGNMENT to the same success. Every member of the Team, irrespective of their role or designation must have absolute clarity on what will make the Team as a whole, win. Further, every member must be aligned to that winning. This is not about the individual 'surrendering' to the Team, or adopting the attitude that 'we' is more important than 'I'. While that may sound very noble, it need not be practical. Instead, what is required is to ensure that every individual's concept of winning is aligned to the Team's winning. This is primarily a function of the mission statement, goal setting, and appraisal and reward policies.
Trust in each other's clarity and alignment. When everyone in the Team has complete trust in each other's clarity and alignment, various other attributes like Communication, Collaboration, Delegation, Time Management, and Acceptance of Critical Feedback, become available at the level of primary attitude, and not as technique. Without this trust, no amount of training in communication, collaboration, or delegation will bring forth the desired behaviour. With this trust, all these become instinctively and abundantly available, as the basic behavioural ingredients of Natural Teams.

Once these three pillars are created, you have a 'Natural Team'. A Natural Team is a very powerful entity. They will find the competencies, create the resources, manage time, enjoy change and challenge, and communicate powerfully irrespective of voice, accent, or vocabulary, simply because no natural Team wants to be second to another Team. The basic programming of a Natural Team is to win, to be first.

The ultimate challenge of Leadership is to create natural Teams. Once you do so, you don't have to make people perform. People WANT TO PERFORM. Still better, a Leader who creates a natural Team becomes an Enabler of Leadership - where the Team becomes the Leader. Individuals take on situational leadership, irrespective of designation or seniority, depending on who has the greatest clarity, creativity, and energy in a given task at a given time, and the designated Leader enables and empowers this process.

(I am only giving the concise definitions here. In case any reader asks for greater clarity, I would be happy to elaborate .)

Introduction to "CorporateTheatre"

2009-02-04T00:17:00.000-08:00

"CorporateTheatre" is a theatre-based "learning" methodology that uses theatre tools and techniques to enable corporate participants experience their immense power and possibilities as Individuals and as Teams. The methodology evolved over more than 15 years as I used 'theatre' to integrate and empower my own corporate teams in the organization that I worked with. Seeing the impact of the workshops, as well as the feedback, and the interest that the methodology elicited from other organizations who came to know of it, I decided to take it up as a full-time occupation in June 2002. Since June 2002, till December 2008, over 26,000 Participants have experienced "CorporateTheatre". These have included CEOs, Directors, Consultants, Facilitators, Presidents and Plant workers representing a wide range of Industry, Hierarchy, Nationality, and Culture, with new clients coming in almost entirely through referrals from others who have experienced the methodology.

In the process of doing these workshops and directly experiencing the possibilities and the wisdom of thousands of Participants from varied backgrounds, I have gained immensely rich and valuable insights into the amazing power of human Teams to deliver excellence under pressure, under changing and challenging conditions, and actually ENJOY it. Many of my own concepts and definitions have changed, right from the definition of 'Team', 'Communication', 'Creativity', 'Conflict Management', 'Time Management', 'Leadership', 'Stress', etc.

The objective of starting this blog is to share these insights with whoever may find it useful in the course of working with, or leading, Teams towards consistent excellence.

I will end this first post with the 4 basic learning principles on which the "CorporateTheatre" methodology is based:

Learning happens best in the 'child' state. In the 'adult' state, one has most of the answers, very few questions.

No one can train another. The onus is on the learner. Unless the learner chooses to learn, learning does not take place.

One person's knowledge need not be relevant to another. Learning is best when each one gets in touch with their own wisdom.

Transformation is the most immediate and direct result of learning. If there is no transformation, there has been no learning.

In the next post I will give more details about the methodology and the learning needs that are addressed. As we go further, I will also share insights, concepts, definitions, and actual workshop experiences. I promise to avoid theory and jargon and to share only what has actually been experienced, with absolute honesty and without any frills or embellishments.