All of us have been posed this question some time or the other. And we usually shrug off the question with flippant dismissal. Very few of us are ecstatic or gush about how swell life is. Many of us reply with weary sighs while some of us grimace with ill-concealed pain. What we are talking about here of course is not life in the sense of being alive and breathing, but the quality of life we live.

I often wonder about the quality of life we seek, and can’t help comparing it to food to see whether we have the recipe to make life tick.

Childhood to maturity

For most of us, childhood is when life is most enjoyable. Bereft of responsibility, we are taken care of, sheltered, fed, clothed, educated and kept in good health. All we have to do is savour every wonderful moment to the fullest. Whenever we take ill, all we have to do is lie back and recover. Nothing clutters the brain beyond the events of the day. It is often said that a child is happiest because he or she lives in the present with both mind and body as one unit.

When we are young adults, life begins to bloom as the mind and body are nourished with knowledge and metabolism, peaking to produce perhaps the finest co-ordination between the mental and physical states. Life is one great colourful flourish on the canvass of time. But what happens thereafter?

Youth moves on to maturity and we begin to gain “focus” on our lives and what direction we wish our lives to take. Ambitions and achievements take over from the spirit of adventure. Dedication and devotion to purpose replace daredevilry. Deliberate thought process prevails over impulsive intuition. Career quests overshadow the carefree spirit.

Coping with stress, chaos, work-life imbalances, pressures of the daily grind, people relationships, demanding targets, conflicting goals, aspirations and professional paradigms of an ever-changing world are daunting tasks that sap us mentally and physically! Burnout, suicide and divorce are some of the outcomes of such a life.

Life on a platter

There is no solution unless life resembles a balanced meal. And how is that so? Well, sometimes we assume life to be only that part which takes up most of our time. For the career chasers it is their vertical growth rate in the organisation or in their own business and for the homemaker, it is housework. All this reflects quantity and not quality. But not so with food!

Almost anybody I know has dined out at a restaurant. When choosing where to eat, we invariably look for not just good cuisine, but also the location of the restaurant, the parking service, the air-conditioning, the music, the décor, the ambience, the nature of its current clientele and so on. While all we really do is eat there. But the packaging and the surrounding benefits are so necessary and all so important to us. Then why do we judge life by just the food, or sometimes by just the main course?

Why not package life in a way that even the most miserable meal or career glows in the ambience of hobbies or career offshoots? Whenever I’ve sat down to order a meal, I invariably look for the accompaniments, and often enough it is these that decide the success of the meal. I cannot get into my steak, no matter how delicious it looks, without my baked potatoes, spinach and boiled veggies and that pat of golden butter oozing goodness. I know of a fellow who went berserk when he did not receive his pickles with the food. It simply shows that not always is the quality of food or for that matter, life, defined by just the main serving, but often enough, it is the tiny add-ons that really decide the lip smacking goodness of life.

Packaging the zing!

What are these add-ons that put the zing into life? This is for each one of us to find out individually. It can often be an absorbing hobby or sport or music or any parallel line of activity that brings in tangible fulfilment. Sometimes physical evidence of effort ploughed in, does not reflect as much as we desire, in our basic square meal in life. So we choose to bring in activities of our own, which meet this need.

I often offset my reverses or lack of results at work by creating my own successes, unto myself, if not to anybody else, through penning my thoughts and experiences into tangible form, either in prose or poetry. Energizing yourself becomes necessary to sustain the quality of living in the main life zones, usually career and family life. Somehow, if we were as fussy about the add-ons to our lives as we are in choosing the toppings for our pizza, life could become one big delight.

Not all of us are fortunate enough to choose a line of work or career that dovetails comfortably with our skills or education or interest. But aren’t we often told at the restaurant that the very item we wish to savour is not on the menu of the day? Do we leave the restaurant and seek another one where we find what we want, even if it takes all night? The chances are, we don’t and instead settle for the next best or whatever else is available.

We can make the best of the situation by either being open to the new experience of what gets served in our plate, or disguising what we have with a whole lot of sauces and condiments, hoping to reconstruct something totally new. Isn’t life often frighteningly like that?

If we could only pause to listen to the winds of fresh thought whispering through our minds, we would certainly have cause for celebrating the true quality of life!

From the beginning of time, as the world and life itself evolved, mankind has constantly striven to push the pace of progress, leaving the weak to die, and the strong to live and thrive. We called it the process of ‘natural selection’. And so it is today too, with even greater ferocity and ruthlessness.

Anybody within reach of reality, must always recognize the compelling need – of discomfort, of constant change, of threat to survival, of creating and fostering change, of continually learning, of challenging the established norm.

Only when you can catalyze change continuously, can you truly consider yourself to be leading on the edge.

The arithmetic is very simple. The size of the pie being constant, to eat more of it, somebody else has to go hungry. That is, unless somebody has the wisdom and the ability to make another pie and another. Business and Life strategies are increasingly pointed in this direction. How to make another pie!

Here is a Do It Yourself Kit that each individual would find useful in the marathon race for survival and growth especially in these times of uncertainty.

1. Believe in Yourself – You Count!
1.1 List your Strengths.
1.2 List successful Moments of Truth in your life.
1.3 List Positive Feedback you have received.
1.4 Write an Appreciative Letter to yourself.
1.5 Write One Thing you do well that others don’t or cannot do.
2. Put Your Entire Energy into What You Do- It’s Your Signature!
2.1 Make every moment special.
2.2 Check what you have done for excellence.
2.3 Set standards for yourself.
2.4 Sell your work to yourself.
2.5 Make a Masterpiece of any work you do.
3. Value and Respect Others, No Matter Who They Are or What They Do – You Can Learn From Anyone!
3.1 List Your Everyday Advisors and their Key Advice.
3.2 Write a positive note on How to Use each Key Advice.
3.3 Make it important to Try each Key Advice and Record the Result.
3.4 Write down Who You Discount or Discredit as Capable of Sound Advice and Why.
3.5 Write down at least 2 Good Points about those you have put in the “Discredit List”.
4. Experiment and Experience Life – Move Out of Your Shell!
4.1 Describe a Typical Day in your Life.
4.2 Write what New Things you have done each day for the past Ten days.
4.3 Write down Things that you want to do in Life but do not dare to.
4.4 Write down Positive Outcomes and Negative outcomes for each.
4.5 Write down How you will Handle each Negative Outcome successfully.

5. Learn to Forgive Yourself and Others – But Do Not Encourage Incompetence!
5.1 Make a list of all the mistakes you can recall you have made in the past one year.
5.2 Put down reasons for each mistake and classify them into 3 categories – PERSONAL ( identify whether Lack of Knowledge or Lack of Personal Competence / Skill / Ability ), CIRCUMSTANTIAL ( Due to Situations out of Your Control ), or PROVOKED ( because of Other People’s interference/ incorrect advice / involvement).
5.3 Write down consequences of each mistake.
5.4 Decide how you will handle each consequence to produce a Positive Outcome.
5.5 Examine each PERSONAL error and write down what you have to do to strengthen yourself in the areas of Knowledge, Skills and Capabilities to improve your overall Competence.
6. Keep an Open Mind, Learn to Coexist with Differences – In People and their Opinions and Views.
6.1 Make a list of people you do not like – people known to you personally or professionally.
6.2 Write what you find wrong with each one of them.
6.3 Put down honestly, at least one clear bias or prejudice you hold against each one.
6.4 Examine the link between your bias or prejudice and your judgment about these people.
6.5 Write down honestly any small agreement you may have with each view or opinion you have rejected or discarded.
7. Take Charge of Your Life – Be Alert at the Wheel, Learn to Accelerate, Chart Your Course, Follow the Signs, Decide Your Breaks, Fill Your Tank and Turn On the Music too!
7.1 Write down One Dozen things you are trying to accomplish at the moment.
7.2 Write down your progress against each one – use a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is the maximum accomplishment score.
7.3 Put down what is blocking you against each of these one dozen items.
7.4 As a consultant, recommend to yourself, what you should do to overcome these obstacles.
7.5 Write down how you will celebrate each success in overturning each obstacle, and make sure you do it.

8. Make Sure You Have Passengers in Your Car too – Carry Others along with you, Create Wealth for Others too!
8.1 Make a list of the closest people you live with and those you work with.
8.2 Write down for each one what you think are their needs and concerns.
8.3 Write down what you do well and what capabilities you possess to do those things well.
8.4 Put down against each thing you do well, how you can help each one of the people you have listed earlier.
8.5 Make a silent promise to each one you have listed that you will help them in someway, no matter how small.
9. Be Humble Not Arrogant, but Market Yourself Vigourously and Honestly!
9.1 Write down a complete list of all your possible strengths and capabilities.
9.2 Create affinity clusters of these and write down the results they can help produce or deliver, regardless whether you currently have the opportunity or not.
9.3 Write down who needs to know about each of these strengths and capabilities.
9.4 Make an appointment with at least 3 key people from your list.
9.5 Discuss your strengths and capabilities with these 3 key people and ask them how and when they can use your talents.

10. Keep revisiting Your Goals ( roadmap ) and Keep a Clear Eye on the Road too – Stay Focused on the Present while Working out the Future!
10.1 Write a list of everything you could possibly want in life.
10.2 Qualify each one as Short Term, Medium Term and Long Term, using your own definition of the time frame for each.
10.3 Put deadlines for all Short Term goals and list at least 10 immediate activities or tasks you need to perform to achieve them.
10.4 Draw flexible time-lines for each Medium Term and Long Term goal and list at least 10 short term activities / tasks you must perform to achieve each one.
10.5 Raise red flag check points on all time framed activities and tasks.

My conscience? What was that? Years after being a corporate citizen in an overly competitive world, I thought I had rid myself of it a long time ago! My nearly four year old daughter it was indeed, standing firmly in her place instead, tugging at my eyelids and admonishing me in the most mature parent like voice she could manage “Common daddy, why are your sleeping? It’s a beautiful day outside!”

One of the great joys of being a father is to be greeted by an angel in the morning and I reached out with both arms pulling her down and buried my face in her tummy making her squeal with delight and propping her upon my knees, enquired “So what does my sweetheart want to do today?” That did it. The litany commenced, “I want to go out, I want to ride in a bus, I want to go in that plane, I want to go to the beach, I want to go to Goa, I want to go shopping, I want to go and play, I want to go to my friend’s house, I want to go to dance school, I want to see that movie…” And she meant them all! So began a day that as it progressed promised to burst at the seams, remarkably with more vigour and fun ending in an energy so high that almost could not be run down!  Amazed aren’t you? Well so was I, but I recalled my own youth and how much we did and lived in one day, each day at a time. Powerful lives lived at full stretch. The cup really did run over.

So why do we live within the cup of our lives, why not let it run over any more. We seem to be happy with living contained lives, within the sanctuary of safety, responsibilities, focus, rationality, reasonableness, moderation and therefore mediocrity! Perhaps without realizing it, we have slid down the greasy pole of achievement and success to a level of happy mediocrity where life seems to be assured and the peril of striving to stay at the top is swapped with the comforting lull of “consolidation”. Something like hanging up the wanderer’s backpack and parking your high-roads bike, for a log-house in a meadow and a stately sedan to carry the growing midriff of a “settled” life.

Seems interesting and the right thing to do at first, until you realize what you give up. We give up the spirit to explore our world, to savour the thrill that risk brings, the ability to live with less and still feel like a king, to give freely from what we have because there’s nothing to miss when it’s gone, to delight with the discoveries of new avenues of living, the experience of experimenting, the savage need to conquer, the untamed cry of the rebel against institutionalizing and corralling an exuberant life into straight-jacketed mellowness,  no longer daring to dream but dreaming to dare, no longer at the cutting edge of a razor sharp life, but on the blunted butt of balanced sensibility.

After 18 years of driving a car with the four wheels of balance, I decided to buy myself a bike once again. An Enfield 350cc Thunderbird. Why? Because I need to feel the wind whip my hair again, the rain splatter against my face, to bend and twist my thickened torso once again as I weave in and out of traffic, around sharp curves and the thrill of the balance between machine and man! And the almost orgasmic joy of straddling the roar and throb of the powerful engine, extending an almost phallic fantasy of machismo. Pure adrenaline indeed! Brief moments of it are enough to energize my day beyond belief. The ageing adult reliving the fantasies of an adolescent, one may say, but that was when all the undiluted fun and the raw power of life lay!

Mating the maturity and assuredness of the sober adult with the reckless and fiery spirit of the unfettered child can be one of the most rejuvenating experiences in living life powerfully again. Because this time around we have more options and are more capable of unlocking sensitive doors skillfully rather than battering them down with the brute force of unbridled and brash youth. We can love without letting lust intervene too early, live with risk rather than risk life, learn to unlearn and relearn instead of learning by rote, plan and do, rather than “plan to do” or only “do and undo”, acquire and give away, rather than snatch and hide, succeed and support instead of fail and flail, aspire and acknowledge achievement rather than compete and crush the competition, conquer and democratize rather than capture and dictate, build shining towers of shared success rather than colonies of mediocrity walled within the confines of meagerness.

Making life count and making a difference is the way to making life deliver delight. Powerful living is not a dream. It is an aspiration in action. Inscribe your own shining life epitaph by crossing every point on the bucket-list you write with the blood of buoyant youth, the will of the achieving adult and the wisdom of the old.

–

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of Valmer International, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

So here we are back to our flat bellied world, only to find that we have purged more than necessary from the system. We have had to let go growth-steam , production- rhythm , momentum of change, motivation to experiment, learning ladders of progress, tenets of teamwork, enrolment of ethics, relationship realty, partnerships and scores of nutrients that are needed to fill the system with sustainable growth and competitive advantage. And all because the enema of deflated vision, along with powerful doses of survival laxatives impartially wash out all elements in the tubes!

Weakened at the knees of stability and glassy-eyed from the spasms of painful “detoxification” of the business blueprint of growth, one can be excused at despairing at the shrunken and emaciated remains of a thriving life. Blown away and blown apart are the lives of thousands and for countless generations onwards this effect will snowball to create the greatest revolutions of economic life on the planet. What do we do with this sick world? Well the best thing is to dig in your heels on the slopes of the downturn and force through a U- turn.

Let’s look at what we can all do to chip in during these tough times. My guess is that it is very similar to what we do when we are really sick. We get a diagnosis done, medicate as advised, support the recovery process, stay in the groove keeping hope of recovery alive, get back up as soon as we can, allow recovery to complete the journey beyond the sensation of wellness, plant flags of our learning on the way ahead, learn new ways to be more resilient and forecast how to deal with future illnesses resident on the journey, achieve a new fullness of health which promises to be more resilient and immune to the bacteria of breakdown.

Translate this to the times of today, and we can look beyond the “medication” which is in progress, and work out the steps from supporting recovery to future new health. The organization and the individual can work in tandem to produce the armour we require.

What the individual can do

•    Use the time available to get back into shape – health, knowledge, skills and abilities.

•    Enroll your hobbies into your mainstream of life – the future may lie there instead.

•    Recast your lifestyle – critically examine what you need and what are the excesses that can be cut away.

•    Repair and renew the life you have – revisit old practices like walking instead of driving , visiting instead of emailing ,  using cost effective public systems  in transport and communication instead of costly private luxuries, budget-shops instead of glitzy malls with expensive distractions, more meals at home instead of fast food take-aways and glamorous dining at starred restaurants, a quiet and enjoyable  sip of wine at home with the family at dinner, rather than the wallet shaking pub-crawling crave, living with the fashion statements already in your closet rather than the ones in magazines and showroom windows, more polish on the shoe leather instead of new leather – old leather is so much more comfortable, and well… you complete this list!

•   Invest in the future rather than spend for the present, because the future is still available. So educate yourself further with well-chosen courses that add value to your future, certify your knowledge and pick up additional skills by examining what your natural talents and abilities can do for you.

•   Provide yourself with options by creating them from the “meta-markets” of your life-skills. For example, if you are a good teacher, learn to become a professional life-coach, a trainer, a counselor. Or if you sing well, train your voice professionally, if you are knowledgeable and skilled, learn to teach and pass on the baton of success to others, if you like gardening,  learn to landscape, if you draw and paint, then start offering your skills to printing and publishing houses, learn and certify yourself in computer animation courses, if you like cars and bikes, learn how to repair them, learn how to design them, if you like playing with colour, learn how to apply it in industrial design and interior decoration and so on.

•    Combine incomes, skills and lives – get back to community living.  Try the new-old way of sharing with family or creating sharing families with friends. Let your networking skills create synergistic skill and life networks that live the practice. It will help you build organizations for the future. You may never need to “get back to work”!

What the organization can do

Well to begin with the organization jumbo-jet can pull full throttle on the twin-engines of good governance and corporate social responsibility. These are those very engines of growth they have touted and won awards for in the “good times” and must now fly in their passengers (read employees, channel partners, vendors, stakeholders etc.) in the “bad times”. Because the passengers are on board since they have already bought their tickets which paid for the fuel and carriage, and cannot be simply jettisoned because the pilot and crew are incompetent to perform to full emergency measures!

This would call for measures such as:

•    Counseling the employees what to expect of the future in this business.

•    Increasing the level of in-house expertise through training and development activities in a focused manner to support and sharpen skills directly related to business.

•    Stepping up motivation by involving close examination of the hygiene and motivational factors and what strengthening of these would result in better performances.

•    Conducting talent identification processes to identify what talents other than those aligned to business are available and counseling employees how that can use their talents to cope with the future.

•    Creating creative “brain-shops” in the organization to examine extreme and diverse ways of leapfrogging or re-scaling or reframing and reinventing business life cycles.

•    Cutting the flab from business spend across the organization rather than simply cutting salaries and jobs.

•    Investing more in focused operations like R&D and product distribution rather than advertising and promotional gimmickry.

•    Moving from cost-cutting to cost-reduction as a design not a mere measure.

Together the twin clasp of individual and organizational effort to stem the hemorrhaging flow of talent, competence, capability and opportunity can help restore some of the equilibrium to the violent see-sawing of life today.

None of the suggestions offered are all consuming or exhaustive, nor do they prescribe fortune filled futures, but they do allow you to dig in your heels and gouge the hell out of the downslide to slow you down enough to craft the U-turn after which the real hard work begins – going back up the hill!

–

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of Valmer International, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

To achieve anything noteworthy in life calls for a certain amount of “stretch” which put plainly means that one has to “struggle” with the performance and delivery of results that meet higher standards than those in play. I would rather call this a raising of the bar or an aspiration in action. Performing within our capabilities guarantees delivery against promises made, but these are mediocre performances delivering mediocre goals. Satisfaction with this leads to a dull sense of happy mediocrity and diminished dreams.

At Valmar International, we have put together our own definition of success in our Vision Statement, drawing from all those lessons others have learned and shared and our own experiences and aspirations for success. Allow me to share this with you, as we have found these simple truths of life very useful.

We look at adopting these tenets of life as we A-S-P-I-R-E for success learning six shining lessons of life

A: Accountability for results

Ownership of the task along with responsibility for performance is a prime element of success. Effort no matter how earnest, without focus or direction cannot deliver excellence. “If it has to be, it’s up to me!” is a common enough phrase, but we need to get it off the page and into our work ethic. Desire without a will, subscription to excellence without action, and action without accountability together deliver shallow performances and empty dreams.

The first lesson here is “Make your life count when you put your signature to it.”

S: Strength and stability of values

The guide-ropes across life are woven with the values we bring along with us. Values will hold us accountable not just for what we do, but how we do things too. Values contribute to a life with honor and morality. Values provide the higher ground, on which we can breathe the purity of the air of accomplishment, instead of suffocating in the sulphuric swamps of dishonorable practices.
Good corporate governance at the organizational level and personal ethics at the individual level can help create a single transparent and honest agenda of action.

Not having to watch your back or cover your rear while you are engaged in delivering excellence, is a major relief and allows everyone to commit resources without any reservation. Standing firm on what you believe in allows you to advocate your position and interest soundly. It’s not about being obstinate, but about being definite.

The second lesson is “Stamp goodness on the charter of life in whatever you do. Seal life’s envelope with greatness and leave pettiness penniless.”

P: Passion and purpose in performance

Consider this. You visit a well promoted township and see towers, buildings, parks, restaurants, shopping malls, schools, hospitals and all that makes a township strewn across the landscape with no apparent design or town planning. You further notice that many of the structures were only partially complete, some surrounded by dense bush and overgrown wasteland whilst some with pruned lawns. Roads run smartly through the town but some abruptly end in rough mounds of rubble. Restaurants run glitzy advertisements of their fare and entertainment programs, but this is only in print and not in practice. Hospitals gleam with the most professional equipment but the medical services are run by its lone pharmacy dispensing OTC medicines. You quiz some of the townsfolk about these strange to bizarre matters, and find that they do not sense anything amiss!!

Do we recognize our lives in this context too?  How often do we really plan the township of our life? Giving in to the flavour of the moment we may develop competences that die faster than they are used, redirect our focus mindlessly into convoluted and often unfinished paths, build towers of performance without the support structure in place, leave the “insignificant balance” of competence, performance, values and relationships unfinished or half constructed for completion at an unknown later date. But all this has a sense of tremendous busyness and activity, leaving us feeling we have accomplished things! As we go along we make do with what we have and this makes major withdrawals from our energy and enthusiasm bank balances, till we resign ourselves to living with inconvenience and a poverty-stricken future.

Bringing passion and purpose to performance allows us to create the right architecture and platform for our dreams to rise to celebrate a rich and rewarding present and a promising future.

The third lesson is “Blueprint your life with clear purpose and embed your soul in the achiever’s hallowed hall of fame.”

I: Integrity of intent

Integrity is like a precious stone. A flaw in the stone will not only devalue the stone but also may cause problems for the wearer. Interestingly enough integrity begins with “I” which means that it lies within us to manifest. The completeness or wholeness of the purpose we bring to our performance and relationships as well as the truthfulness and honesty of our intentions, allow us to shed the disguises and garbs of “strategic” intent which is usually opportunistic in favour of  an upstanding unconditional largeness of intent which enlarges the playing field to accommodate others too.

Amidst the fog of deviousness, manipulation and exploitation, integrity of intent is a clear beacon which illuminates the entire relationship with the purity of true partnership in progress.

The fourth lesson is “Be of global intent and design. Leave parched parochialism to wither and die in the sunshine of abundance.”

R: Reliability in relationships

The word relationship itself shows us that just like a ship, all hands must be on the deck and the ship of relation needs the synergy of all members to pull together, especially in rough weather. This applies to teams and associates at the organizational level or families and friends at the individual or personal level. Navigating the storms and tempests of suspicion, doubt, misgivings, moments of weakness, inadequacies and incompetence, can take a severe toll on the most weather-beaten of sailors afloat on the sea of survival and success.

Establishing a resourceful relationship which counts on the contribution of all elements in the network of life, trusting and respecting those in the network and staying with the ship provides the robustness to the relationship. Investing in the relationship unconditionally by contributing first without calculating the returns, and living all the tenets we have described this far, creates the reliability needed to put wind in the sails.

It is all about being there when it matters. Finding the right role to play and a set of convergent goals to guide individual contributions to the relationship are crucial for one to deliver at least what is expected.

The fifth lesson is “Run a 24×7 relationship with your resources. Burn your leave card.”

E: Excellence as a way of life

Making excellence a way of life, means demolishing the middle class of mediocrity and aspiring for the “dance of delight”. Life at the cutting edge of excellence, cannot possibly be played by performing with competences one is conscious of possessing. Instead the thrill and exuberance of a full-blown life comes from reaching higher than the “essential expected” and delivering at the very “pinnacle of performance”. It’s all about asking yourself if what you do is enough or can you go the extra mile.

Pulling performances from the slums of mediocrity can be one of the most rewarding and thrilling experiences one can have. Like an eagle, once you experience the heavens, it is hard to live below the clouds. Finding refuge in being “grounded” or “down to earth” or “in touch with reality” leads to exactly that in the rewards. You are grounded in the earth, immersed in a false sense of security of a rationalized reality instead of soaring to embrace the universe.

The sixth lesson is “Live life at full stretch benchmarking beyond the best.”

With these six lessons of life may you fulfill your dreams and ASPIRE actively for all the success that the world can possibly offer.

–
Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of Valmer International, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

Yet the individuality of each lifestyle is what counts in differentiating key operational arenas to increase or maximize the probability of success.

Today we are faced with certain challenges and tomorrow they may be different. We have to look at each challenge separately and at how we handle them and which partner can handle it best. Once this is clear, then all that has to be done is to support the front line, in other words, actively support as one body, the person taking on the challenge directly.

Goals and dreams

All of us have our own goals and ambitions, dreams and desires, methods and means by which we want to go about achieving them. Some of them are in sharp contrast to the other.  However the common thread in all we do, has to embody the essentials of life, which are a clear sense of self worth, courage of conviction, determination to succeed, honesty of approach, strength of purpose, responsibility for results and a sense of practicality to guide and harness these to achieve our objectives.

Yes, it is important to manage all these qualities such that no single quality exists at the expense of the others. Especially true, where the sense of practicality often overpowers the rest and seeks relief in manipulating the means, to achieve a rationalized practical end. Also true that courage of conviction should not bestow a blindfold on reality.

Balancing life’s imbalances

As you can see, this is a balancing act. Equilibrium is achieved only after the balancing beam has tipped on either side.

Each side is you and somebody else. In your personal life it could be your spouse or your parents or your children or in your professional life it may be your boss or your team; and the balancing beam of the scale of our life is poised on the fulcrum of matured sensibility that holds us on even keel.

And to keep this even keel, each of us have to put in the correct measure of weights against values, means for ends, efforts for results, in each pan.

Values and purpose

Values across life so far, for most of us, are attached to a very strong sense of purpose and strength of resolve to succeed against all odds. Many among us would have faced some of the worst nightmares, which have taken our entire reserve of courage in our convictions and determination to pursue our beliefs.

The task is to ensure that we do not abandon the struggle, but instead stare it in the face at frighteningly close quarters. We have had to ask ourselves very difficult questions and verify the bona fide of our own values. At the end, you would have found that the greatest comfort is in doing what you know is right even when this makes the terrain treacherous.

Winning with right values

Winning is the right result, but, the means is very important too. And ever so often, you may find yourself at the non-preferred end of a rather discomforting duel to maintain life’s precious balance. In a world that rushes you through life like white-water rapids, the struggle is to first keep afloat and somehow manage to steer your war clear of the dangers that present themselves at each churning twist and turn. Life is in today’s competitive world, an unsettling yet exciting experience! The sheer thrill of being on board your own life is hard to be matched. Staying at the helm and steering your way through unchartered waters is a task that separates the strivers from the strugglers.

No successful ship laden with precious cargo is far from the radar of pirates! Life has its share of buccaneers and pirates. Many successful lives have run aground for reasons ranging from being asleep at the wheel to the comforting swell of mediocrity in deep waters to arrogant navigation flying in the face of life’s tempests to mutiny to hostile takeovers. Of all these, the worst would probably be the handing over of your wheel mid-stream!

Defending your rights against those who want to snatch them away, calls for but one answer. Active defence, and not meek conciliation.

Especially when a sense of practicality tells us that we are capable of mounting not just a defence but an offensive. Negotiation is the route of least defence, when there is no other avenue open.

Happiness and success are not negotiated.

They are fought for. They are worked for. They are earned and then they are defended and protected with all one’s might. This calls for an active engagement with one’s life, not a casual enquiry. Investigate, illuminate, initiate, innovate, integrate your skills, competences, resources, align every thought and feeling  and put every fibre and sinew of your body into the task of retaining and rejoicing in your right to a vibrant life.

I do not sketch life as one big battlefield, but it certainly is no rose garden.

The big question is: Are you willing to negotiate your happiness, your right to life, your future, your family, your marriage and your children and their future, with circumstance or worse, those who feed off the average man’s hopes, dreams and aspirations?

Shall you succumb to a path of least resistance and offer your hard earned present and your well deserved future, on a platter to circumstance or those who have the effrontery to malign it?

Would you be judged by circumstance or those who have no right to judge you and will you rather cloak your courage with the mantle of meekness?

Then you shall surely hand over the keys of your life to such thieves of this treasury.

But you must succeed as who you are and cannot succeed as who you are not. But first, you need to believe in yourself. And get a special someone else to believe in you. Happiness can be yours. Success shall fill your cup of life. Only when you are proud of who you are, what you have done, and to whom.

So here are ten tips for a productive life:

1.    Believe in yourself – you count!
2.    Put your entire energy into what you do- It’s your signature!
3.    Value and respect others, no matter who they are or what they do – you can learn from anyone!
4.    Experiment and experience life – move out of your shell!
5.    Learn to forgive yourself and others but do not encourage incompetence!
6.    Keep an open mind, learn to coexist with differences- in people and their opinions and views.
7.    Take charge of your life – be alert at the wheel, learn to accelerate, chart your course, follow the signs, decide your breaks, fill your tank and turn on the music too!
8.    Make sure you have passengers in your car too Рcarry others along with you, create wealth for others too!
9.    Be humble not arrogant, but market yourself vigorously and honestly!
10.    Keep revisiting your goals (roadmap) and keep a clear eye on the road too Рstay focused on the present while working out the future!

You owe yourself this. You owe this to your future. And to all those who are counting on it.

Decide today to take charge of your ship by being awake and alert at the steering wheel of your life!

–

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of Valmer International, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

Ah! Rejection, the scourge of mortal mankind. For no man is an island, therefore he must relate to others and integrate with the rest of the world. Which in many ways translates to being accepted and approved by others in order to develop competence in the area of interpersonal relationships. Wrong!

All of us undeniably need to be appreciated, which is a positive stroke to our sense of being and doing. Dependency on this need in order to feel better about ourselves is a disorder of rationality and often an emotional overrun stemming from a whole spectrum of causes. Let’s take a look at some of them and see if we can figure a way to transcend these obstacles to a sense of self worth and equilibrium with the rest of the world.

We have been schooled to judge ourselves the ways others see us. Our education system itself unwittingly endorses this inequity, with our sense of competence and ability being judged by others in the close confines and constraints of an academic assessment of memory skills rather than processed thought, applied knowledge and competence to deliver. We ignore the multiple intelligences across which learning can be delivered and force-feed it in a manner which cannot possibly produce the best results. Those who “beat the system”  by mastering the manipulation of clear process flaws, such as offered by almost any coaching or tutorial class, are approved, whilst the real student of learning can often be denied approval or competitive levels of the certification of competences, which have not really been tested.

Collective experiences of being undervalued across life often find origins in the  shrouding of one’s capability in the advocated cloak of “humility”, a virtue we are told to hold dear by a generation of an old world, going into oblivion, as a guide to a new world they have barely experienced and an emerging world they could not possibly accept. Values and belief systems of a dated perception of reality, have contributed to our continued subscription to a single window of assessment of ourselves rather than a 360 degree multiple window assessment centre.

The overpowering need for approval from others has its roots in a deep scarring of a sense of self and an erosion of our deposits of self worth. Lack of approval or acceptance both direct and discreet is what we consider to be “rejection”. But how bad is rejection and what does it really mean to us?

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.” Says the famous American actor Sylvester Stallone, true to his reel-life personas Rambo and Rocky Balboa

Rejection is a word we are plagued with because we have described it to ourselves as failure and we consider failure to be a destination rather than an event. To experience rejection is to experience failure – if viewed positively, this just means that somehow something we do, does not meet with what somebody expects or needs. It does not mean that we become useless or worthless. A one million dollar cheque given to a man too poor to have a bank account, does not make either the one million dollars less that what it is worth or the man poorer than he originally was. The inability to encash the cheque, simply suspends the delivery of wealth at that moment. It does not deny it. Self worth is the multi-million dollar potential we are all born with.

Each and every one of us is born priceless, and every day we gain in value no matter what we do, simply because we are there to witness the day. We can deny the acceptance of the moment and embrace the rejection of those to come. Rejection at its worst is a judgment of the past, not of the future. And since the future holds all the wealth we want or desire, what prevents us from going forward? A fall in the past? If all our futures were pinned on the “sins’’ of the past, we would not survive childhood.

Karl Stern the noted German-Canadian neurologist and psychiatrist puts rejection into succinct perspective when he says “Psychoanalysis shows the human infant as the passive recipient of love, unable to bear hostility. Development is the learning to love actively and to bear rejection.”

So how do we get beyond the fear of rejection? Simple. Learn to love ourselves. Which means, learn to appreciate yourself, concentrating on reframing your focus from what’s wrong to what’s right in your life, approving of yourself wholeheartedly, celebrating who you are, remembering we are all ‘work in progress’ and that perfection is an endeavour, a journey. It is the journey that is significant, for the journey and not the pit-stops we make enroute, is the longest experience.

The next time you feel rejected, issue yourself a Certificate of Approval, signed and stamped by YOU! Encash your multi-million dollar future NOW!

–

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of Valmer International, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

I guess you already know where we are going to. New-year resolutions, the most exciting to make, and most often, the easiest to break. At least that has been the case with most people I know and certainly with me too!

So why do we still make new-year resolutions? And still break them? The thrill of will power struggling with “damn the sham” I guess.  Or just old brainwired habit, a ritual that routinely clicks into place.

Let’s ask a few questions:

•    Why make resolutions at all?
•    Why worry if we break them?
•    Why wait until new year to do so?
•    How relevant are our resolutions to our real problems?
•    How researched are our resolutions that they deliver significantly?
•    Can resolutions be changed as the situation changes?
•    Should resolutions be changed anyway?
•    How important are resolutions to altering our lives driven by destiny?

We can go on of course with innumerable questions to numb our mind and senses to the subject, so that we can then let it wither away from our zone of concern, leave alone our zone of influence and action.

Let’s therefore see some of the logic behind new-year’s resolutions:

•    The new year is when we clear the page of life and start afresh.
•    The new year has a common sense of renewal and resurgence which can find an emotional tie with our resolutions.
•    The new year denies the seamlessness of time that chains us down to our committed lives and helps get us off the old hook.
•    Every new year seems to indicate a turning or tipping point in life. Resolutions made at the tipping or turning point are usually made with far greater insight than when made routinely.
•    Making resolutions is great fun. They allow us to air our dreams. Dreams given oxygen can live longer than those suffocated.
•    Resolutions are a release of the soul. We can unburden all our guilt of the past and commit them to the future, where we believe we can be more powerful to handle it.
•    Resolutions tell us what we really want, but cannot seem to get.
•    Resolutions are a way of making us conscious of what’s blocking our path to success or happiness.
•    Breaking resolutions is surprisingly an expected event, as the deeply rooted behavioural shift that is expected to accompany the resolution to implementation is often too difficult to accomplish in one go.

I could not agree more with the answers above. It is difficult to give up old behaviour we are emotionally attached to or have found even secret comfort with, in favour of a shining new but difficult-to-do behaviour which creates extreme discomfort. It’s like wanting to shift home to a new fantastic place but has nothing to do with the back-breaking and often heart-breaking clearing, sorting, disposing and moving process at all! But at least we now have embedded the desire to move. And we have an address.

I love making resolutions at new year and I am delighted to break some of them too. Funny or crazy or perhaps both. But I do learn from them to some extent. This learning I fill into the gaps of my existing goal sheet and then it makes more sense.

My 5-point star

The Blueprint of my life is a five-point star of purpose and direction. I regularly set time-framed meaningful, measurable and monitored goals in each area.

Every new-year resolution I make, must somehow connect with my 5-point star. I must see the connect and deeply desire the difference it will make to my star. This is the key to keeping or breaking resolutions made. It’s all about how much we really want it at the conscious and unconscious level of our thinking process. Resolutions reframe and redirect our efforts to meet our goals.

The blueprint of my life however is not set at new-year’s eve. It is an ongoing process of refining my dream. Sometime back I sat down and asked myself what goals I had in life and what was the quality of my goals? I realized, much to my shock, that my busy life was being run by happenstance rather than design. It took me a while to lay out a design and I have found this useful. May I offer this to you to see if you would like to try it out too.

The tip of my star is my life goal: This is my ultimate dream as crazy as it may seem. I do not change my life goal but continue to validate and qualify it, to keep deriving a greater sense of purpose to my life, in order to set direction.

The other four points of my star are:

My career goals: My job, my designation, my advancement in my field, my professional path.

My professional equity goals: My history sheet, what makes me good and reliable – the reasons why someone would invest in me namely my knowledge, skills, competences, qualifications, additional certification and so on.

My brand equity goals: My unique selling proposition, what I want to be known for, my mindshare flag – just as any brand has to be developed to be an automatic choice of the market right across the segment.

My leadership goals: My ability to lead, influence, impact and inspire others – one does not need hierarchy to hold us hostage to the power of leadership, for leadership needs to be a way of life, anywhere in the pyramid of society or the organization.

At new year’s eve, I allow my soul to set itself free to quest beyond the blueprint. To light up the new canvas with the same brilliance that the new year seems to hold. I thrill at the colourful sparkles and fountains of radiance that my resolutions bring to my star of life. And some of these glistening shards of my extended reality glitter on my star as the year goes through. While some of them sprinkle fairy dust around the place. For even in trying and not quite succeeding, the journey itself is blessed and leaves a comet-like trail to my shining star.

For this new year may I wish you all a wonderful shining STAR of hope and promise, complete with glorious comet trails of glittering resolutions that fill your heart with as great a delight as the shining promise the future holds.

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of VALMAR INTERNATIONAL, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

Sometimes later in life you may realize the profound lesson behind some of these events and the immense learning it can deliver to you on your difficult yet determined way to success.

Let me share a personal experience with you.

Many years ago, when I was a child, I experienced a strange relationship which I did not give much thought to, but now I see it for what it was and ever since I have realized the lesson it delivered, it has changed my life.

I was the eldest of two children in a small family in Mumbai, India, where the family consisted of my parents and also my ailing grandmother, my father’s mother, His dad had passed away. The family also included an aging unmarried uncle, dad’s eldest brother, who though a hardy veteran of life in all its forms, had experienced terrible setbacks and had retreated to the safety of the family, a shelter from an unfriendly and hostile world.

My father was a quiet, industrious man with a strong sense of purpose and values. His humour was infectious and he embodied the “man of the house” status as if it were natural to him to deal with all the world had to shove at us, with the greatest equanimity I have experienced. Grandma’s ailments kept taking a turn for the worse, and the world too seemed to have turned a shade darker. Yet my father went about what he had to do with more vigour and yet always found the time for us children to play, teach and live in pace with our growing worlds.

My mother was the perfect backbone the family needed. Talented and skilled in art, she set aside her career to look after grandma, and this lasted a long and arduous fifteen years. She was the rock in the family, on which dad could build the home. She was full of life, always busy, always loving, caring to the core, and for us kids, a safe haven to run to in times of trouble. In her arms, and they were strong yet immensely comforting arms affording incredible security, we could find great sanctuary from any form of danger. Mother was invincible. She was later to hold the family together with my father through such terrifying times, that this invincibility was often battered, but never gave way.

Our invincible mother died early at the age of just sixty, six months after she helped my father recover from an unexpected heart attack on the eve of Christmas 2002.
Between our two parents we learned several life lessons, not the least being how to hold a family and faith together in violent turbulence. The smaller lessons are what this note is all about.

Helping around the house, running chores, growing up from levels of dependence to almost arrogant levels of independence can often scar behaviour beyond recognition. But ingrained in us was the need to be decent and respect ourselves and others in all we did. Dad was the role model here, his colleagues often telling us how much he stood apart from the others because of these traits. Mother followed up with the lessons we needed to learn to be like dad. Respect everyone, she said, even those you feel are below your status, like the maid at home, the ordinary worker on the road, the shopkeeper’s attendant, the bus driver and bus conductor, the peon, other children, especially the deprived. Their pain and suffering was their badge of honour, she would say, their qualification for the right to an equal life.
All this translated to simple greetings like “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night” and the all essential “Thank you” and “I’m sorry”. It also meant never taking credit for anything that was not due or belonged to someone else,  returning money or fulfilling payments immediately without waiting for even the next day to pass, paying our fair share, and being responsible and accountable for the little things we took charge of in and around the house.

We schooled quite a distance from where we lived in Mumbai’s northern suburbs, about 15 km away, and with traffic and transport frequency being what it was around 35 years ago, mother took on the task of ferrying us back and forth, the school not having a regular bus service of its own. Poor experiences with a neighbouring school’s bus which left us stranded in a monsoon flood in waist deep water left her so furious, she decided that her responsibilities must include this very difficult ordeal.

To regulate life somewhat, mother chose a bus route that took us directly to school without any changeover midway. This meant being exactly in time for the bus and this being a ring route, we also caught the very same bus on the way back home. So we became familiar faces being regular passengers on a generous part of the route itself. Mother as usual would prompt us to greet the conductor as we boarded the bus and thank the driver as we disembarked. We would then wave to the bus driver and conductor as the bus eased away from the bus stop.

The bus conductor was almost priestly in his disposition and demeanour. Silver haired and dignified, he would return our greeting with his own blessing for the day or the rest of it, while the driver, a burly sunburned toughie with a walrus like moustache, would break into the most delightful smile as we thanked him in chorus and later waved him goodbye.

And so life went on, for a  couple of years, before I finally mustered the courage to assure mother that I could take care of my younger brother and steer ourselves and back form school safely, given the regimen we had established. Skeptical of success, but now terribly overburdened, mother made a few dry runs with us to check our navigational and other competences. She also asked the bus conductor and driver duo to “keep an eye” on us. A request they quickly agreed to comply with. But could you really expect a busy public transport employee, harassed by his very work, barely managing to keep his own equilibrium, to keep this promise? Well, we were in for a surprise.

Like clockwork we managed to make the daily circuit without any incident worth mentioning or remembering. Life was settling down to an even regularity, as far as transport was concerned. Till one day this took a big jolt. The school principal decided to lecture the school for ten long minutes on some moral values of life after the evening prayer at the end of day. This meant that our timetabled life was now going to be turned on its head.

The bus stop was a brisk 12-minute walk from the school door through the playfield, out of the gate, across the road at a busy traffic junction and then a straight run. This gave us 3 minutes to catch our breath and jostle in line to be the first to spring into the bus, my brother in front of me, held and shielded from the rushing crowd. Once in, the usual greeting to the conductor and a run for empty seats if any or a position in the front so one could pick up casual conversation with the walrus-mustachioed driver.

Scrambling for freedom, the school exploded onto the road at the traffic junction just across the gate. Amidst the melee, stood a red bus, unmindful of the green signal to go, and the jarring honking of the traffic behind, pumping its own loud horn in an SOS manner. Puzzled, I looked up, and saw a great big burly face decorated with a walrus mustache, followed by half the burly body, leaning right through the driver’s window calling us to board the bus. Grabbing my brother by the hand, I raced across and boarded from the front, to be greeted with a loud cheer from the passengers, and a huge grin from the driver and a visibly relieved conductor. Thanking him profusely, we spent the remaining journey, being grateful for not being pushed into an unfamiliar route home or being delayed to a degree of discomfort.

The memory soon passed, until it rang several bells when I read Stephen Covey’s thoughts about Emotional Bank Accounting. This concept is so simple and so real. It simply states that just like a financial bank, we deposit and borrow from people we deal with everyday.

It’s called an Emotional Bank Account. Simply put, we need to have a minimum deposit and keep filling in the account to make it work. It helps when we have to make withdrawals. The deposits are simple ones, like acknowledging the other, common courtesies, keeping the small promises we make, being sincere in helping, being sincere in owning up to mistakes made and apologizing with intent to repair the damage done and so on. The small stuff. But all this has to be made unconditionally without plans for withdrawals. No strings attached.

When withdrawals occur, like shortness of temper, demands on time and work priorities, abruptness with courtesies, anger mismanaged, and all the roughshod treatment we dish out liberally in a day, the unconditional deposits we have banked allow us to save the relationship from destruction.

So where does this leave my bus driver, all those many years ago? You got it. The Emotional Bank Accounts we opened with them were liberally filled with the unconditional deposits of children not yet coached with the skills of opportunism of the world. Simple greetings from the heart of innocent children, filled the heart of these veteran workers of the daily gruelling grind of life, to extend themselves to assume the role of parents, and reach out beyond call to fulfil this withdrawal they not just sanctioned but offered.

Keeping an eye on the clock, this grizzled bear of a driver, realized we would not make it on time, so he did the unthinkable, only a parent would do. Scanning the uniformed crowd of children, to search and find, two children from amongst hundreds, and get them on board, to keep a promise made so casually must have been the consequence of the EBA being driven right home.

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of VALMAR INTERNATIONAL, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl

Over time it has been realized that the wise one is not necessarily the most skilled teacher. Learning proficiently and transferring the learning just as well is not really as simple as it seems. It takes far more skill to teach than to learn.

The teacher has not only to have a full and wholesome appreciation of the subject but also know how best to transfer this in its entirety in a useful manner to the learner considering the learning styles and needs of each individual learner.

Whilst studies have been popularized concerning learning styles, and suitable adaptation of knowledge transference has been undertaken to match the varied learning styles of participants, the newer platform of transference has to do with the multiple intelligences that seem to be far more effective in reaching across to the learner.

The theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. It suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on IQ testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes several different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:

•    Linguistic intelligence (word smart)
•    Logical-mathematical intelligence (number/reasoning smart)
•    Spatial intelligence (picture smart)
•    Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (body smart)
•    Musical intelligence (music smart)
•    Interpersonal intelligence (people smart)
•    Intrapersonal intelligence (self smart)
•    Naturalist intelligence (nature smart)

How does this affect us learning facilitators and trainers and our participants?

The theory of multiple intelligences has strong implications for adult learning and development. Many adults and young professionals seeking to make their mark in life often find themselves in jobs that do not make optimal use of their most highly developed intelligences. For example, the highly bodily-kinesthetic individual may be stuck in a linguistic or logical desk-job like customer care when he or she would be much happier in a job where they could move around, such as in front-line sales.

The theory of multiple intelligences gives adults a whole new way to look at their lives, examining potentials that they left behind in their childhood (such as a love for art or drama) but now have the opportunity to develop through courses, hobbies, or other programs of self-development.

This is another way of chasing away the boredom with the routine or the mundane work one becomes habituated to accept and live with, lowering the levels of enthusiasm, responsiveness and creativity – some of the essential ingredients for success in these competitive times.

What we must recognize is that these multiple intelligences offer choices to (a) trainers/teachers/learning & development facilitators to use varied methods and practices of transferring and processing learning deliverables and to (b) participants to acquire and learn varied methods of addressing work itself, using creative methods to address work issues through the favoured and more developed intelligences

Let’s look at the eight intelligences and how training or learning methods can be matched against them.

Linguistic intelligence (word smart): Reference reading material, reference books, well scripted program handbooks.

Logical-mathematical intelligence (number/reasoning smart) Case studies, problem solving models & techniques, inventory/ questionnaire/ response form/ instrument evaluation & analysis.

Spatial intelligence (picture smart): Use of graphs, charts, pictures and diagrams.

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (body smart): Role plays, projects, structured training games/activities.

Musical intelligence (music smart): Music with learning deliverable lyrics. Participants create musical learning summaries using popular tunes, leveraging nursery rhymes to advanced learning songs & anthems.

Interpersonal intelligence (people smart): Team exercises that need the identification and use of the varied resources of team members.

Intrapersonal intelligence (self smart): Presentations by participants on processed learning, role-reversals. Participants study and deliver (teach) selected modules in the program itself, participants are asked to create learning models/modules

Naturalist intelligence (nature smart): Learning from real world experiences, interpretations and guiding principles that emerge from such experiences.

Dr. Howard Gardner says that other than areas of developed expertise, most of us react or process and infer learning outcomes in all other areas in the manner we used to do as 5-year-old kids – the earliest levels of cognitive intelligence.

Implications of this are as follows for trainers/facilitators/teachers and our corporate participants:

1. As trainers/teachers/facilitators we need to be experts at what we teach else we are simply transferring our own 5-year-old childish reasoning and logic to the participants, who receive it believing it is the word of the expert. The snowballing consequences are nightmarish!

2. To be experts, demands more than average attention and learning in the area of study.

3. Extensive reading (to replace extensive research and study) is the minimal effort one has to undertake to raise the levels of personal awareness, knowledge/content and competence/understanding.

4. Participants are unlikely to react in the ‘expected’ manner in either receiving, processing or understanding the learning deliverables, as they are most likely to be at a level of ‘non-expert’ in these areas and therefore would have learning conclusions matching their own 5-year-old level of logic and belief.

Concluding remarks

This exercise leads us to some interesting conclusions in the training-learning process:

a. Content transference is easily possible at an adult learning level. Summarising received content at the end of the program is not an indication of learning or understanding as pointed out by Dr. Gardner.
b. Understanding can only be ascertained when participants apply the learning in simulated real world experiences that are necessarily different from the experience created when delivering the concept. For example, participants can offer each other their own past experiences and ask others how they would use the learning to have handled the situation, or offer their own new approaches to the old
c. Training videos, role plays, case study experiments, training exercises, need to be processed with ‘understanding’ in mind – not a simple analysis of what happened in the experiment or video or exercise, which is what participants tend to explain, but how this learning can be applied at work/back in real life.
d. Similarly hoping that the video/exercise or experiment is ‘self-explanatory’ is not constructive as the learning derived by participants is likely to be unprocessed content management and learning summaries are derived from the 5-year-old child-like ‘theories of life’. The ‘expert’ must anchor the learning rather than leave loose ends to be automatically tied.
e. Understanding can be investigated only by moving from basic questions like what, why, how to the more advance ‘aesthetic’ level questioning skills/questions that ask participants to offer personally processed input that has direct bearing on their work practices or behavior.
f. This points to program design and delivery process. Program designs which are packed almost like a school time table leave very little processing and understanding time. The program flow is often ‘impaired’ by handling lack of understanding or processing by participants and therefore participants learn to respond by cleverly managing the showcasing of content to represent learning and understanding, in order to release the program flow and time which tends to be the casualty, in a concept-crowded program.
g. The facilitator has to be equipped to deal with the following learning hurdles which participants will unconsciously throw up.

• Misconceptions: Based on their past experiences, pet theories and assumptions
• Rigid algorithms/formulas: Formed from their earlier explanations of how the world works; input to output formulas that worked or seemed to work; expert opinions of others they consider experts, information in magazines/MIS data (tabulated and charted data tends to overwhelm the thinking and understanding process).
• Stereotyping and world views held by participants to diagnose and judge the rest of the world , in order to make decisions, are usually based on earlier formed assumptions and perceptions which without confrontation or validity checks, often script the guide book of their current life.

Dexter J Valles, business and life trainer renowned for his programs under the “At the Steering Wheel of Life” and “Winning Edge” banners, is CEO of VALMAR INTERNATIONAL, a Mumbai-based management consultancy. Contact him at www.valmarinternational.com or http://valmar.page.tl