drsonaliduttabaanerjee

Colours to brighten|Shades of life

Colours you wear everyday has an impact on your mood and outcomes. How do you think you can work it for your favour… To know more lets explore.

There is no denying the link between colors and our emotions, and we even have an abundance of idioms to show what way each color can affect our mood. It can be a small thing, such as gazing out the window at a patch of green for a few minutes or wearing something bright on a rainy day.

Our relationship with colours

Not everybody will react the same way to the same colour.

Colours influence us on a few different levels. On one hand, we are conditioned socially and culturally. For example, we mourn in black or white, two opposing colours, and which one you’ll wear depends on your location.

On the other hand, our reaction is also personal, influenced by how this colour is presented in our own lives.

In the realm of Indian Vedic science, colours hold a special significance, influencing our destinies and attracting positive energies. The ancient wisdom of choosing the right color for each day of the week has guided individuals towards good fortune and a harmonious existence. In this enlightening guide, we will explore the mystical world of colors and their connection to the days of the week. From serene whites to enigmatic blacks, let us unlock the secrets of color power and learn which colour to wear on which day to embrace positivity and prosperity.

1. Monday: Serene White

As the week begins, immerse yourself in the tranquil aura of white. Symbolizing purity and clarity, wearing white on Monday helps you start the week on a peaceful note. It purifies your thoughts and actions, setting the stage for a harmonious journey ahead. White also fosters a sense of renewal and helps you embrace new beginnings with grace.

2. Tuesday: Fiery Red

Tuesday calls for the fiery energy of red. This bold and passionate color ignites your courage and determination, empowering you to face challenges with zeal. Red is known for its ability to increase vitality and stimulate your inner strength. So, don a touch of red to boost your confidence and drive, helping you conquer any obstacle that comes your way.

3. Wednesday: Lively Green

Midweek arrives with the vibrant green, symbolizing growth and prosperity. Green brings balance and harmony, making it perfect for Wednesday. Embrace this color to rejuvenate your spirit and foster a positive outlook on life. Green also instills a sense of hope and renewal, making it ideal for refreshing your mind and staying focused.

4. Thursday: Optimistic Yellow

Bright and cheerful, yellow is the color for Thursday. It represents wisdom and optimism, uplifting your spirits and encouraging a sunny disposition. Wearing yellow attracts success and positivity into your life, helping you embrace each day with enthusiasm and joy. Let the radiance of yellow fill your Thursday with brightness and positivity.

5. Friday: Graceful Pink

Friday’s charm lies in the soothing grace of pink. The color of love and affection, pink fosters compassion and understanding. Embrace this gentle hue to strengthen your relationships and bring harmony to your heart. Pink also encourages feelings of tenderness and emotional healing, making it perfect for resolving conflicts and nurturing bonds with loved ones.

6. Saturday: Enigmatic Black

Saturday arrives with the enigmatic allure of black. Contrary to the common belief that black is ominous, Indian astrology views it as a color of protection and grounding. Black helps you find inner strength and stability, allowing you to face challenges with a sense of security. Embrace the mysterious energy of black on Saturday to delve into your subconscious and explore the depths of your inner self.

7. Sunday: Radiant Orange or Pink

The week concludes with the radiant energy of orange. A symbol of enthusiasm and creativity, orange fills your day with joy and vitality. Embrace this vibrant color to bask in the warmth of new beginnings. Orange ignites your passion and zest for life, encouraging you to pursue your dreams with fervor and enthusiasm.

Colours are not merely hues that adorn our lives; they possess the power to shape our energies and experiences. Indian ancient wisdom reveals the profound significance of wearing specific colours on each day of the week, attracting positivity and prosperity. From serene whites to enigmatic blacks, each color resonates with unique qualities, empowering us to navigate life’s journey with grace and strength.

Embrace the magic of colours and unlock their potential to influence your destiny positively. Let the simple act of wearing the right color infuse your days with joy, success, and harmony. As you don the colours of each day, may your life be forever blessed with an abundance of positivity and fulfilment.

Do share your experience of wearing colours on specific days and your results etc.

For more read following books –

The PSYCHOLOGICAL effect of COLORS in our life

TASK ORIENTED VS PEOPLE ORIENTED| HOW TO STRIKE A BALANCE|

Striking a balance between Task oriented and people oriented is always a tough one. People and task are two sides of the same coin in leadership success. Balancing company objectives and people needs is the responsibility of every leader. Managing dead lines and employee welfare at the same time is sometimes the biggest challenge that every leader faces. Can one prioritise one and work without balancing is a question yet to be answered.

Both have their down sides. To manage a productive environment one needs to change one’s style as per the circumstances and context.

In situations of business contingency or even client requirements, often the deadlines are sacrosanct; when the task oriented leadership to deliver on the goals becomes mandatory. In times like this, the team may feel the leader is being unreasonable… While you demonstrate leadership via assigning specific tasks and steps to achieve those tasks. There’s hardly any time for consensus building. Leader while operating as a task manager, often appears as a dictator. The fact remains that task in hand is what the client pays for, without which everyone’s existence in the system is redundant! Thus setting clear vision in balancing both is critical.

Task oriented leadership implies, prioritizing tasks at hand. There are deadlines, there are objectives, there are tight timelines. Getting it done is the important part.

So, you call a meeting. Your team discusses the new objective and deadline, recognizing the tight timetable necessary to get it done. Through discussion, your team concludes that it isn’t possible but that a Minimum Viable Product can be developed by that time, and certain non-essential elements of the objective can be met shortly after that.

Likewise when you look after people you can set them up for a win-win deal. People-oriented leadership also known as democratic leadership, this leadership style is characterized by the leader heavily involving their team members in decision-making, gaining input, and also seeking suggestions. It can be an extremely compelling and engaging leadership style when handled effectively.

While the above descriptions paint a solid picture of each leadership style, both need a good balance to yield best outcomes. Depending on your perspective, the above might make a task-oriented leader sound like an ineffective petty dictator. Conversely, it can make a people-oriented leader look like ineffective and weak.

3 Ways to balance Task and People orientation:

Mapping people to what they aspire to do: When people are doing what they like, accomplishing tasks becomes easier. Thus understanding skills and people could be a great way to achieve organisational goals.
Catching People doing great job -Taking time out to appreciate people can go a long way in encouraging them to stay aligned to tasks or goal oriented.
Sharing the ‘Why’ of the task with people -When people understand the nuances of the larger picture they get better oriented towards the task. Thus the balance of task and people becomes much easier.

In truth, neither leadership style is inherently better than the other. Both need to be well balanced for best outcomes.

How well do you balance your people and task? What are the best practices that’s helped you?

Do explore following reads to know more

Leadership Results

Follow the leader

LEARNER ENGAGEMENT| IMMERSIVE SKILL TRANSFER|

The new normal after the covid times, has made virtual, self paced, and online sessions, mandatory not only in work environment but also academia. Creating an immersive online solution is one of the most difficult challenges that an instructional designer faces today. The obvious methods focus on telling -asking and performing; which at times becomes monotonous and less compelling to the learner. Short capsules where the learns could be exposed to new methods -strategies or ideas of life and skill enhancement, can go a long way in engaging the learning enthusiasts and also the disengaged learners.

Rather than the conventional methods, following are 6 immersive methods of transferring knowledge and skill:

Create a challenging, realistic practice activity (not a knowledge check). The activity asks people to make the same decision that they need to make on the job. It’s probably a scenario or used case situations in the day to day process.
Identify the minimum approaches that people need to know, to complete that activity or the transaction. Thinking on your feet kind of case studies -situation based decision making, handling dynamics are based on real time experiments. The more exposure you give a learner the more capable they become to face the challenges.
Make that information available as an optional link in the activity. Let people pull the information when they need it. More autonomy while learning rather than governing the learning journey. Today’s generation z want to enjoy their own control and self-paced in a learning environment. Thus crisp short learning content which can allow the learner to take the decision to pick up a book -video -movie, self paced series of lectures or game for learning is the way forward in this industry.
Plunge people into that activity with no presentation beforehand. Learning by doing is one of the fundamental immersive simulations that can support the learner imbibe the skill faster.
Once people make their choice, consider showing the necessary information in the feedback. First show the consequence of the choice (continue the story). Then show the information that the learner should have looked at. Story telling in learning journey.
Dramatise your scenario through online or offline gamification that challenges the learner to course correct. Today gamification is extensively used in virtual reality based learning and also immersive learning experience.

The result is a stream of activities in which learners pull the information they need. It’s not a presentation occasionally interrupted by an activity, its a journey of blended learning with class room, online, e-learning, coaching, mentoring combined.

If you’ve made the activities get progressively more complex, you’ll want to maintain their sequence during the spacing. Consider ending the sequence with a live discussion to help people synthesise what they’ve learned.

Another option is to make the activities available for people to try whenever they want, probably with a recommended order of completion.

Recently while discussing with one of my team members we realised that, giving employees flexibility to learn from anywhere ( mobile learning)s critical to keep them engaged and relevant in their industry.

Blended and mobile learning methods are the best way for knowledge or skill transfer. Today every professional wants to get skilled by way of attending small modules while they are on their trade-mill or listening to podcasts, gardening, eating or travelling etc.

How engaged are your learners? How can you mastermind smooth knowledge transfer? How could you get started? Look forward to more ideas from you on immersive learning experience…

To know more explore the following reads:

Immersive Learning

Immersive Story Telling

Communication Excellence for Leadership Impact|

During one of my discussions with my daughter, we realised communication is what strengthens or weakens a relationship and also overall health. As a medicine student she felt that a lot of health hazards including diseases could be a result of lack of communication. While virtual interactions has brought us together, face to face interactions can further enhance the communication process.

Communication is an indispensable element in human world, our expression through words, gestures or even thinking has an overall impact on us and our fellow beings. The term ‘communication’ is derived from the Latin word ‘communis‘, which means common. Therefore, communication is defined as an exchange of facts, ideas, opinions, or emotions to create mutual understanding. It is the sum of all things one person does in order to create understanding in the minds of others. However the fundamentals of communication is to derive the best outcomes in our ecosystem.

Good leadership practices at work place -communities or with families or friendships is rooted in effective communication. Demystifying the process of effective communication is critical for a leader’s scorecard both professionally and personally. Working with authenticity -clarity -transparency and consistency is the biggest aspect of being a leader in any space or time. Case in point the captain of the ship can make or break the lives of many looking upto to him. Right from goal setting -guidance to growth of a person all depends on the communication channels. Transparency is essential, and leaders should strive to keep an open door for employees to approach them with their needs or issues.

As per the research and also the guidelines of GPTW (Great Places to Work) surveys communication is the top aspect to be focused on for business and employee welfare. In fact ‘Communication’ tops the list when organizations ask what qualities make a company a great place to work. Open and timely workplace communication builds transparency and trust that goes both ways, in addition to uniting employees and leadership under the same goals.

Following is a simple 3 step process to communication practice:

Listening – As leader its critical to practice effective listening whether its in written -spoken or even reading gestures of people. As this allows the leader to understand and decode the input which when wrongly construed can be counter productivity.
Being Receptive -Being receptive to people you lead is critical as you are as good as your team. Listening is productive only when we are receptive and willing to act on the concerns. Thus voicing is only as effective as is the reception.
Summarising -Finally summarising with your own perspectives in empathetic tone can go a long way to action the improvement areas.

Finally LRS like CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is a great tool to simplify a communication process and be a Kaizen ninja!! (rapid improvement processes, often is considered to be the “building block” of all lean production methods. Kaizen focuses on eliminating waste, improving productivity, and achieving sustained continual improvement in targeted activities and processes of an organisation)

Is your communication process helping you ? What are the best practices for your communication? Do share your experience as a leader ?

To know more explore the following read:

Leadership is Language

Communication as a Leader

4Laws to build Effective Habits| Atomic Habits

Recently when I was on a vacation with my friends I came across this book, Atomic Habit by James Clear. It was an amazing experience reading and learning the simple nuances of transforming life by adopting effective habits and abandoning the bad ones. We truly are a product of our habits. Thus life transformation can only happen through habit changes or modifications.

In fact when James talks about his life and how he has used this formula to build tiny -atomic habits and the way it has created a system of excellence is truly phenomenal. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results and outcomes. These effective habits could be regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; this consistent practice of the habits eventually translates into long term systems of results in our lives.

The 4 Laws around the atomic habits are following:

Cue – This actually triggers your brain to initiate a behaviour or an act. It also indicates a reward related to the simple cue symbol. Most common cues are time and location. Making the cue a big part of your environment also helps in imbibing the habit and practicing it daily. Hussain Bolt a world class athlete has the tiger chasing him as a cue, and this propels him to run faster than anything on the earth! Thus the cue helps you brace yourself towards the activity. Thus making it obvious and visible in your life makes you align better towards the system you are building in your lfie.
Craving -Making something desirable and attractive is the second element in terms of moving towards the same. Motivational force behind every habit…Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state…Wanting the reward. The expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act.
Response -The actual habit you perform (can take the form of a thought or an action. Response (sacrifice of energy) always precedes reward (the collection of resources) Using your decision making for the action to be performed is response which finally helps you earn your reward. This entire cue -craving response is also based on Skinner’s experiment of how the dog sees the bell as the trigger/cue for salivating/craving, eat the food/ response for final satisfaction and satiation of the hunger which is the reward.
Reward -When the response creates satisfaction, the habit loop gets completed. This also encourages one to keep going on the habit. Whatever we are rewarded for tends to continue better as habit, and keeps getting repeated. I think the best example in recent times are the Marathon events, where people get the completion medals after a running event for the 5k-21k or 42k run which is a sense of gratification. Business houses use this formula to sell their products on a day to day basis. If you look at Coke, McDonalds, bollywood movies …they are all based on these fundamentals.

Often times we run for a big goal in life, without planning the 1percent improvement that we want to experience in our day to day micro level activities which actually impact our goals. Building a system of excellence in our daily habits at granular level can actually facilitate better results in the longer term.

This book has many dimensions to develop systems that can have compounding effect on our lives. The inversion of the laws can also help in shedding our bad habits. Critical element in building habits is also to build a support group or a network that encourages and cheerleads you to your successful journey and also reaching your destination point.

What habits are your struggling with? Are there any daily atomic/micro levels habits that you are struggling with? How would like to start building a support group to practice the four rules of habit building?

To know more you could explore the following :

Atomic Habits

The Power of Habit

Adding Value as a mentor| Mentoring Best Practices|

As a mentor its always great to see the mentee prosper in their respective goals and aspirations. However recently when I read the book Atomic Habits by James clear, I felt as mentors we need to focus more on systems of habit rather than accomplishments. Systems are what creates identities and long term gratification and progress rather than some temporary deja-vu. Look out for my next blog to know more on how you can help your team, coachees or mentees to build atomic habits that can have compounding effects on all that they would like to achieve while on this planet!!

It is hard to argue against the benefits of mentoring programs. Mentoring from a veteran in the domain helps us gain perspective in how we could use our time – efforts and ecosystem to lead a fulfilling professional life, while we deal with road blocks and deviations!!!

Lot of thoughts and iterations should happen before the design of a customised mentorship program that can not only serve the interests of the board but also facilitate growth for the employees in knowledge -skill and attributes. Before introducing one to the organisation, leaders need to ask themselves: what makes a good mentorship program? While there’s no “right” answer to this question. Let’s explore the 6 mentoring best practices that can be implemented.

1. Identify the systems you want to change

Establishing clear systems will help you determine the design, format, and overall direction of your mentoring program. The alignment of the vision of the organization with that of the mentorship program is imperative for long term success.

For instance, if your current system of retaining top talent is not working, bring about incremental improvements by looking at tiny aspects and processes that impact the same. It is not just mentorship, strengthening the talent acquisition teams to hire in accordance to culture and value fitment is also something that needs to be looked into. Mentorship programs need to be well integrated with all other systems in the organization and not just work in silos.

2. Choose your mentors

When it comes to selecting mentors, you have to decide whether you’re going to use internal or external leaders. Of course, there are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches.

Sourcing mentors internally is great because they’re familiar with your company and can provide tailored advice to those who want to progress in the organization – not to mention the mentors themselves will hugely benefit from the program, while establishing relationships with other employees at the organization. However, internal mentors may bring more subjectivity into their relationships, which can be harmful to the mentee….thus bringing external experts from time to time can introduce a larger horizon in their thinking

External mentors, on the other hand, bring objectivity into the relationship. They’re also a great option for organizations that don’t have enough leaders to support their mentoring program. The downside of external mentors is that they don’t have any company-specific knowledge and may not be as helpful in that regard.

3. Matching mentor mentee process

Matching mentors and mentees is a process that, if not approached with care, can be prone to biases. For instance, if you allow people to pick their own mentors or mentees, they’re likely to select someone similar to themselves. This can limit growth opportunities for the mentee.

Effective matching is about more than just skills, interests, and job descriptions. The key is to develop a well-rounded picture of each mentor and mentee and make a match based on the organisational vision.

4. Guidelines to be used as holy grail of the process

To set your mentors and mentees up for success, establishing general guidelines is critical. When your mentoring programs have a structure and a clear set of expectations, all the participants will have a strong foundation to work on. This also ensures consistency across the program. You can offer guidance in areas such as:

Frequency of meeting between mentors and mentees
How to track progress
Expectations of both mentors and mentees
How to navigate potential challenges

5. Ensure the program is equitable

Avoiding biases that can trickle into the mentoring programs need to be looked into judiciously. Everyone in the organization needs to have equal access to the development programs.

6. Successful launch with senior leadership focus

A successful launch is critical to getting the program off on the right foot. Engage the help of the senior leadership and marketing teams to come up with an announcement strategy for the mentoring program. This can include methods like:

Sharing the announcement across multiple channels, such as intranet, email, and at a company-wide meeting
Hosting a lunch and learn so employees can learn more about the mentoring program and ask questions
Having some of the top executives in the organization sign up to be mentors to create excitement around the program

It maybe a good process to run a pilot of the mentoring program before the “official” launch. This helps avoiding major gaps. Also being open to inputs and ideas to enrich the process is important to make it valuable to the participants.

As the mentoring program grows, make sure everyone else at the company is aware of its success! While the leadership team will probably want to see tangible metrics, such as the impact of the mentoring program on employee-related outcomes like engagement and retention… Measuring and sharing success stories, testimonials and benefits from the program at coffee tables is the best proof of success of the program! However running surveys and focus groups can also be very helpful in refining the program.

Have you had mentorship programs for your organization? How has it helped? What are some the best outcomes and best practices? Do share with us.

For more on this do explore the following read

The Art of Mentoring

Partnership| Shared Leadership & Mutual Trust & Respect|

Recently when we completed 29 years of our journey together as a couple; I was astounded by how eventful the journey has been. Totally from different backgrounds when we started our journey, I was a student who just wanted to live a romantic Mills & Boon life!! However gradually with all the push, carving and inspiration I realised that I had a great. environment to balance a life of family and a professional journey!

Marriage like partnership or team game, is a project for equals and the moment there is imbalance in the sense of being equals…there are conflicts and concerns. Thus maintaining a sense of shared leadership, mutual trust and respect is what makes the journey worthy. The moment one of the team members tries to over power the other, the relationship can get vulnerable to misunderstanding and dissatisfaction. The ability to reach the status of being equal is fundamental need of a sustained relationship. We are all powerful in our own ways and ability to share the stage and leadership with another, is a way to appreciate the powers of others.

Marriage, we learned is an institution with unlimited variables, that cannot simply be formulated into a software application. A successful marriage requires a mix of Compatibility, Chemistry, Commitment, Community, Communication and Compassion. We see our relationship as the centre forward and striker, where we take turns or comply with situations when it comes to creation and scoring the goals!!!

In our 29 years of journey, our biggest learnings have been the following:

Ignore shortcomings and highlight the talents -To work on any relationship in the long term, specially where you see your team. members day. and night; its important to see the best in. them to survive all challenges -anger or unbearable behavioural traits.
Unconditional support, respect and trust -Any relationship where you need to think about respect. and trust is not worth being in. This is a critical aspect for being partners in a team.
Celebrating simple joys and milestones– Ability to appreciate small milestones is a way. to celebrate a long lasting relationship.
Aligning to joint decision making -Deciding on things together is another way of sharing the leadership. The moment decision making is one sided in a partnership, the other person feels like an outsider…thus the best way to progress is to allow POV of the team before the final decision. In fact now even children have a say in how things could be done better.
Doing things together -This could be complex projects or even sports or even a simple walk. Conversing -Cooking -Cleaning or even day dreaming together can be a great way to bond and find each others inner peace.
Encouraging or being the cheerleader -Encouraging each other in their respective passion -dreams or goals builds long term confidence and faith in each other. We learn to walk with our parents, run with our friends, and finally we learn to reach for our dreams and life goals with our spouse.

Finding a friend -well-wisher -cheerleader -partner -team member in your spouse is blissful. Interestingly, even in our work-life we need some of these attributes to make successful team members, whether our peers -supervisors or team members we need to build trust -respect and have a shared leadership approach to achieve our true potential.

To know more on how you can build great relationship with your spouse, do explore the following reads:

Building Teamwork in your marriage

Power of understanding people

Trust Selling|A Way to Operate in Life|

During my recent conversations with senior leadership, I came across. this age old. formula. for sales. And this turned out to be such an eye opener. Often times in. life we. think that strategy is more of manipulation than building predictable systems. Whether its Leadership -Parenting or even social behaviours and relationships, trust is the building block for a lasting impact. The best example that I could ever think of was of how switching lanes while driving we use car indicators to share our plans with our fellow drivers and pedestrians. Just like a wrong indicator can cause damage to people around similarly breaching trust in leadership -sales -personal relationships can cause turmoils. Thus agreeing on ground rules from time to time to avoid exigencies is always a good idea.

Following are the pillars of trust based selling:

Integrity: You’re received as reliable, dependable and trustworthy.
Competency: You can deliver on what you say you can.
Recognition: You treat them as a person, rather than a number.
Proactivity: You genuinely care about their best interests.

Trust is a hugely important factor that affects our experiences in the world of work. There are several different models that can help us think about trust including the Trust Equation (The trust equation says an individual’s trustworthiness is equal to their credibility, reliability and intimacy, all divided by their level of self-orientation. Individuals can develop their trustworthiness by addressing these underlying trust factors.) and the Ken Blanchard’s ABCDs of Trust.

Below is the Ken Blanchard’s ABCD model that you could practice to build long term trust in sales cycles.

There are many different ways to get people to buy things. Some of the other trust building models are Cialdini’s work.-(Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion are reciprocity, scarcity, authority, commitment and consistency, liking and consensus. By understanding these rules, you can use them to persuade and influence others. In addition, work on creating addictive products like the Hook model (the hook model of behavioural design is a framework for designing addictive products. It is closely related to the habit loop. It has 4 stages: trigger, action, variable reward and investment. When built into produces these stages drive user engagement and lead to habit formation.).

However one of the best trust building books is ‘Speed of Trust’ by Stephen M R Covey. This book talks about various examples and the fundamentals of building long term trust. See the video below to understand this better.

Speed of Trust

Trust is a hard-nosed business asset which can deliver quantifiable economic value. When trust is high, speed of execution goes up and costs go down. For that and other sound reasons, it makes good financial sense to consistently find ways to enhance trust levels both within and external to your business organisation. The foundational principles for building trust are credibility. -consistent behaviour, alignment, reputation and contribution.

Do you trust your co-workers? Your lack of trust could be breaking your agility and outcomes? How would you like to use the speed of trust?

For more on this, do explore the following reads:

Power of Trust

The Courage to Trust

Speed of Trust

Lessons from Turning Red|Handling Emotions|

This Saturday had a great time watching the movie Turning Red with my children. The child in us still yearns for the animated movies, which is often times loaded with remarkable substance and message.

Pixar’s latest film Turning Red is a great analogy to emotion management and also creating a support group to express them occasionally. Turning Red is a 2022 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios. The movie is a narrative about Mei, a young but mature girl who is ready to grow up and join the world of adults working around her. While Mei initially thinks that she has everything figured out, she soon realises that there is a lot more to growing up than meets the eye and that even adults don’t know everything!!

The movie is a wakeup call for us to accept ourselves as we are, rather than constantly pleasing the world around us! While understanding and accommodating others is important, accepting and expressing oneself is also critical.

The 3 fundamental take aways from the movie are:

Prioritizing the Fun in life: Fun and happiness are important aspects of life that can keep us charged for all things that we want to accomplish. Travelling, painting, reading, spending time with friends or gardening whatever gives pleasure can be a great dopamine booster. Mei and her friends find different ways to create fun in life which also develops their inner talents.
Accepting your authentic self -Often we feel we are here to constantly please others which in turn restrains our ability to be authentic. Unleashing the panda in us from time to time can help us stay in tune with our inner being.
Creating an inner circle who are not judgmental – When people constantly judge us it creates burnout. We are able to give our best in environments where we are accepted -nurtured and encouraged. Thus, creating an inner circle of friends and family who boost your confidence and cheer lead you, can be very positive therapy method in this volatile world!!

Do you have friends and family to express yours joys or sorrows? Do you suppress your emotions and curb the panda in you? How do you balance work, emotion and fun to lead a more fulfilling life?

Do explore watching Turning Red on Netflix to find your inner child!

Click this link to see the trailer of Turning Red.

Cross Mentoring| Looking up to younger generation|

Cross-generational mentoring is defined as pairing individuals from different generations with the goal of mutual learning and growth. Through mentoring relationship where multiple generations share experiences, skills, and knowledge, employees are able to create a bridge. In the workplace today we have different generations and to be able to appreciate every unique individual and get the best out of them is a talent that every leader today needs to practice and nurture.

Mentoring can increase employee engagement and elicit better work out of employees. This is especially true with cross-generational mentoring, because the older generations are more engaged. Pairing them with younger generations will transfer their engagement, creating a better company and boosting productivity within the organisation. Like wise the younger generation comes with a lot of new tech and idea exposure that could be leveraged by the millennials.

Recently when I was spending time with my daughter and her cousin, I realised that their POV is something that can sometimes expand our horizons and way of looking at our environment. Their speed, spirit and spontaneity is what inspires me the most. Being open to learning at all times is one of the best ways to collaborate across different generations, which is also a way to Kaizen or consistent improvement in any process.

Do you have a cross mentor who belongs to gen z? Are you struggling to elicit the best ideas and thoughts from your team members ? How do you want to leverage the different age groups in your work environment?

To know more do explore the following reads:

Reverse mentoring

The Coaching Habit