Understanding Human Psychology

I stumble across the story of captain Charlie Plumb who fought in the Vietnam war. His story on how he was tortured as a prisoner of war is well known.  From the time he joined military, he flew 74 times and landed back in his territory safely, however at the 75th time his plane was shot and with his parachute landed in the foreign territory where he became a prisoner of war. When after years he  returned to his homeland, his story of how he survived and his tactics of keeping his spirits high even in grave times was heard by many.  One day he came across a sailor, who was on the same ship from where Captain Pulmb had taken off that dreadful flight. The sailor recognised him and mentioned that he had packed the parachute for the flight for Plumb. Captain Pulmb had not recognised him, but suddenly felt grateful as due to the right things done by the sailor, Pulmb was able to effectively use the parachute and land safely. This instant humility which hit Plumb, becomes an eye opener for h

 Are you relevant to the current times? Keeping pace with the tide is vital to be relevant. Relevance is doing what keeps you up in your game of life. What does it take to stay relevant in today's world? I asked many of my friends and colleagues, what does it mean for you to stay relevant and what do you need to do to stay relevant? Since I am in the training and coaching field, I got answers from individuals of the same cohort. They stated that for them relevance means know what is latest in your area of expertise, gaining mastery over skills and behaviours of your type of job. For being relevant, usually we upgrade our knowledge, learn new skills and inculcate behaviours which clearly push your growth trajectory.  But staying relevant also means shedding old notions, letting go off what does not work for you anymore. Staying relevant means making way for the new, giving up unhealthy and unresourceful ideas and beliefs. Like a snake sheds his skin, and birds shed their old feather

  A good night sleep heals everything. A tired mind and even an ailing body. That is what many people are heard saying. Have you ever felt that a realaxed sleep brought you so much peace that your energy got renewed? In spite of this, have you also felt tired even after getting a crazy amount of sleep? I am sure many of us have gone through this experience. What do you think could be the reason?  While it is true that we are physically rested but mentally not at peace. Hence we are stressed and cannot have a sleep without any thoughts.  It happens with all of us. I have developed my own technique to deal with it and I do follow it at most times. I shall share it with you here as a gift as we move to the new year.  Before we falll it is great to follow a ritual. I do it. Like I say in my mind few words of gratitude to all those who have crossed my path in the day, i pray and then shut my eyes. However, to control the worrying thoughts which flow on and on i do this visualisation exercis

 Priya was a life coach, she would coach hundreds of stressed individuals and help them sort their lives. Think of life in a simplified way and gain a fresh perspective. However she would often hear from others about how strong a coach would be and would never need any external venting to feel better in any situation. The common words of others would be 'You must be so sorted yourself, as you understand human psychology and who will behave in what way, at what time.' When people look at the life of a councellor or a coach, many a times I have heard them say in awe. Wow your life must be so sorted. There must be just no issue that is worrying you. You must be always taking the right decisions. You must be always thinking objectively. Nothing can deter a person who is so positive. The likes of all of this and more, is a common understanding of many individuals who come in contact with a counselor or even with a life coach.  The truth is how vulnerable we all are as human beings.

  After Riya got flak from her boss Raj for her negligence at work and in fact going ahead and hiding that till asked about it. What do you think Riya felt? And what do you think changed in her behaviour after that incident? She instantly felt demotivated. She decided not to go back and ask him anything related to work also. She started staying aloof and bad mouthing the organisation and it's culture to others, even at work. Feeling anxious, worried, not comfortable to confront are common feelings while we need to go ahead get feedback and ask for feedback. Not seeking feedback does not only deprive you of learning opportunities, but also keeps you away from a much needed insight, especially in form of a constructive feedback. Additionally the eagerness to receive feedback can have a positive impact on the way your seniors perceive you. Many employees are either fearful to ask for feedback or do not know how to initiate the conversation with their seniors or peers in their team. Us

Remember Riya from our previous article? She was the one who had made a perception of bias towards women in offices because of behaviour of one boss which she generalized across bosses and workplaces. So one day Riya was asked to arrange employee engagement activities at office for Diwali. Her boss Raj gave her the primary responsibility of the task while she also could ask for help and assistance from her colleagues Rohit and Priya. As the program got over, Riya saw few gifts which she was distributing, missing from the lot. As a token of participation, the organisation had arranged plants as gifts. Riya inquired about the miss and the office boys told her that many employees liked the plants and picked them up to take them home. Riya thought that it was a low value item, and they were in excess anyway, so there is no need to inform anyone about the incident. That evening, Raj shared his appreciation in front of the entire team about how Riya conducted the program so well and all the

It was Anand v/s Riya at the chess competition in the office canteen. It was funny when Riya observed the crowd cheer them. She saw from the corner of her eye that her boss gave some special attention to Anand while he had his turn to play.  The boss Seetaram was so involved in signalling Anand the next winning moves that he dint even realise that Riya was also a part of his team. Was Seetaram biased? Well in this scenario anyone would think that he was. However, if we go to see from a non-biased third person perspective, that was just a quick judgement we just passed about Seetaram's personality.  An NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) presupposition states 'You cannot not communicate'. We are always communicating via verbal medium or through our body language. Even our silence speaks volumes about our feelings and mood.   Here too, Seetaram was communicating through his body language and gestures. It was assumed in Riya's head that she was been treated unfairly. Altho

  While Lenmark was on his daily walk he spotted a man jogging his way, without feeling the stress or even panting the way Lenmark was. Lenmark thought to himself, 'What fitness does this guy have. Wow! I wish i could be like him n jog without panting at all. Although I have been able to make it for my walk, i still am not good enough.' The day proceed and Lenmark was on a client update call. His counterpart was giving an update and was garnering praises from the boss for his communication. This is when Lenmark thought, 'Woah! When will I get that kind of praise too? I am not good enough with my communication. I need to gear up.' During lunch hour, the team slurpped on another team member's tiffin. Lenmark watched it carefully and thought, 'I can't cook so well too. I am so not good enough.' During a late evening meeting, it was Lenmark's time to present a project he had been working on since a long long period. After his presentation, his team appla

  Confidence is the ability to feel beautiful without someone need to be telling you that you really are.. If you have doubts about yourself and do not value yourself, how would others value you. No they would definitely not.  You know your worth. And if you do not you must explore it. Yes, social validation proves great when you are already having the high spirits. But at most times when the spirits are low and you carry a low self-esteem, even social validation proves to be a momentary rush of energy.  You can be judged by others opinions. And why do I say that? Because all opinions will vary. If you actually start looking at yourself through others eyes, you will land up having to be dependent on the other person's thought-process about you. You will have many different opinions from people and they will highly influence you to think their way. Each will have their own. No point in having a confused indentity consisted on other's thinking.  Most of the time people pass casua

  Loved this - No one can see his reflection in running water. It's only still water that we can see. Such an insightful analogy, and also profound.  Pause and give it a thought. How fundamental it is to approach any situation with a calm mind to see a clear picture. At most times the storm is within the individual. A series of thoughts blocking the mind. Choose to let them obstruct your path and they will. Vis-a-vis choose to clear the mind from running negative images. Let settle in positivity by challenging the limiting beliefs.  A coach can help in this regard. Be it relationship, finance, career, role change, learning challenges or any such aspect.  Only if a person approaches his world with calm, he will be able to see his reflection of thoughts objectively.  How calm are the waters in your mind at most times? Do you see your reflection clearly? 

I sat in the auto and put my lunch bag to my right and my laptop bag to my left. And the very next minute felt a bit uncomfortable as I reached out with my left hand to open the chain of my laptop bag to fetch my ear pods. Why? To my left hand this action felt alien as usually my bags are kept the other way round and my right hand goes into the laptop bag zipper to reach the ear pods. Sounds simple.. try it yourself and see how this small change makes you feel conscious and pull your attention to a task which you did almost monotonous.  I was attending a training recently where we spoke on patterns of behaviour, exiting comfort zones and rewiring our minds. Is this also rewiring? I wonder! While I brush with my dominant hand, i tried using my left hand one day and I was again feeling that I'm paying extra attention to that action and actually building a different neural pathway for the same activity. NLP states that every individual can learn any skill if he wants to and that too a

Managers expectations when it comes to vacancies..uff.. Am I supposed to know it all? To what extent should I have expertise in all whatever is written in this list? This job description seems to be very comprehensive, I am not really sure how many things I can cater to, this list seems to be endless.  These and many more such thoughts crossed the mind of Ramesh as he can scanned the job description for a potential job he was applying for. Like Ramesh, I think, we all go through this. We are really not sure of how many things in the job description which is mentioned by a potential employer can be full filled by us.  It is not about doubting yourself or your qualities, or skills, it is about the number of items which the list has and how many things you hold expertise in, how many things you know well, and how many things you think you have touched up on briefly in your career, which maybe applicable to this job too.  How many of us like Ramesh and think about this..let's us be hon

  As promised in my early or blog, I would be glad to continue discussing about the importance of the precise communication you engage in with your colleagues as work instructions.  So finally did the manager listen or did the people take charge of the task jointly as a team? What are those tasks people are not clear about? What task they are supposed to be communicated well, even if you describe who has to and do not have to engage in it? Who should be having clarity and who is supposed to do that timely discussion? Who owns the task is not clear and the social loafing concept spoken in the earlier blog talks of just this. Every one thought that someone else is supposed to do the task.  Some thought that the manager is just expressing his thoughts to us, maybe he will do it himself.    Listening for managers is beyond the listening of words, it is understanding of the psyche and listening to the mental dialogue, thoughts of the individuals. Was our manager in the story doing that? Oh

 Yes, you read it right. It's not enough to know what you don't know. That is Conscious Incompetence.  You know you are not good at something and you are aware that you don't know a skill. So act upon it. As per NLP, every human can learn any skill and grab any knowledge he requires at any age . Many times as a coach I face a situation that there are people who are very well aware of what they are not knowing and lacking in their career. But surprisingly, it does your brother them even. So many a times as a coach I face the situation where people come complaining that they have lost out on a promotion or they have not progress on their job as they were desiring but when asked about their efforts, it clearly shows that they have not putting those efforts which are required. It is not just enough to know that you are not having those skills. You are not even ready to put in the efforts required; that you sit with a coach or a mentor or a senior manager and try and understand

Innate, yes, you have it within you. Those knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) that are so much in demand for growth in your organization and in your career. May be you have never looked for. Seek and you shall find. Many-a-times coachees are completely unaware about their potential. They may just be frustrated of a lost chance for promotion. Being frustrated really doesn't help as it just leads to a more of upset feeling and even the existing job role gets affected negatively to a great extent. Either the person may feel that he is not being valued and he may get such kind of perception about the outside world, which may not be real. Instead try to dig in and know the innate KSAs which would help him immediately get started to work for a promotion next year or mid year.  It is not impossible if we work towards it patiently. Just find out what the job role requires and what is it that you have it in you and are not yet putting it to the best possible use if you are unaware or it

  Resolution...Learning to stick..How to not play a game with yourself.. RESOLUTION..let's break this into words to make meaning of it. As per the dictionary it is a firm decision to do or not to do something. I would define is as RE-ReLook at the SOLUTION to something you are long wanting to do and procrastinating, or relook at a solution for an extremely pressing issue. Now most of us have tried this. We make resolutions for the New Year and even break those and resume back to old patterns of behaviour within less than 6 to 10 weeks. Reasons? Many of them... we are usually too ambitious with our targets. For any habit to set into our lifestyle it requires patience and consistency. It also requires the much needed time schedule in our times. We have heard this common saying 'A place for everything and everything in its place.' In the same manner 'A time for everything is the day and everything works as per schedule.' That means your New Year Resolutions should be

  The Beautiful Journey Towards Success Smart work does not replace hardwork to achieve success. To be a leader, to grow to that level, you should have done all the work that you are going to then, at that stage, supervise. Your hands on experience much earlier in your career will help you confidently take future roles. Sadly, the generation in their 20s, so many of them, do not resonate with this concept. This is purely my observation over a few years and I am open to any logical argument, if you propose otherwise. May be this interaction and observation of mine is limited to the call centre industry that I've been associated with beyond 4 years now. After finishing swanky MBAs or engineering degrees too, a large number of pass-outs come to join BPOs as a Customer Care Agent. Where, I do very much respect all types of jobs, at the same time, I feel waste of a college seat, waste of money, time and talent should not be done. After a great degree, unfortunately done under the for

  In a search for meaning and purpose of life, most of us associate ourselves with tangent entities around us. For us even God has to be tangent, therefore idol worship exisits. But once our family and friends get on with their own lives, our children have their own careers and families to settle with, our education is over and we retire from our careers. One day we wake up to having one or more of these aspects missing, in our lives, to look after and look forward to. It could be that we have retired and the job which was an identity or purpose of life, is not associated with us anymore. For example a person who has got fired from her job may feel an absolute helplessness, void and would question their existence. We all must have our own purposes and that should drive us to being ourselves. We must go after the things that we want. And this want is different for everyone. I am what I am within myself. My purpose is not my family, friends, education, child, job or career. My purpose

 Have you ever felt a deep sense of emotional connect when someone is narrating a situation? Did you ever relate a personal story to an issue your friend,teacher, parent or trainer is narrating? I'm sure we face such feelings multiple times in our daily life. Learning occurs when we listen to life experiences of others. Listening is a powerful mind tool. Research suggests that we remember around 25 to 50 percent of what we have heard.  A great deal of material is available on storytelling and learning how to do it better, in today's times. Adults learn from each other everyday through stories. So we are actually storytelling in our everyday lives, always. We have stories at workplace, in webinars, in classrooms, in training rooms, even the media, always, tells us a story. By story I do not mean pure fiction. Stories mean incidents which are either real or fictional, but they leave us with lessons to learn from. If you want to enhance your learning, then listen to other's s

  Portfolio Update I was recently reading LinkedIn for skills that employees must acquire as working professionals and freshers, especially after the pandemic, when so many jobs have become redundant, new jobs have cropped up and some have seen modified working styles and requirements. The article focussed on the PM's statement, on ‘the importance of getting skilled, reskilled and upskilled as the need of the hour.’ Dr. Manish Kumar, MD of National Skill Development Corporation, in an interview, stated that, ‘the industry requires us to upgrade’. While, hard skills or technical skills, in-demand, vary from logistics, AI, analytics, machine learning, BFSI, data science; employers are also seeking soft skills for their workforce .  Some of these skills, like communication, are learnt as a result of being taught and with practice. But others, like empathy, adaptability, ability to manage change, growth mindset, are more of personality traits, according to me. Yes, we do teach these