Vipassana in 10 minutes

In the era of e-learning, hand held gadgets were still gaining their edge in display and memory. The Blackberry was the equivalent of the underground bestseller then. Ranjan Acharya, my boss was aghast when vendors were pushing for content on platforms such as the handheld to address Leadership Development. For him, the blur between convenience and essential learning was a corruptible blind spot for the learning function. In characteristic wit, he asked us “So, would you get Transformational Leadership in 5 minutes, just because you have a Blackberry?”

In 2017, the visual design experience has reduced substance to mere labels on handheld devices. So, even if you are the cover of the book, the market models for data on handhelds has conditioned you to short attention spans. You can afford longer attentiveness however. E.g. Someone like the Chief Minister of an Indian State can still opt for and will attend a 10 days Vipassana Retreat.

The corresponding map on social media now features caricatures, apparently trying to explain away laborious text in visual graphics. So, the trumped-up logic is the power of the visual. Sure; but is there one living example of Transformational Leadership from the latest Daniel Pink like animation?

So today, we have lampoon like artists among L&D professionals who provide stylized caricatures and flow diagram connectors to provide alibis for requisite depth in learning and development constructs. They are enthused by Television Rating Points (TRPS) forms of adulation, or at the very least by frequent boosts to their hedonistic intents. Their patience to watch, observe or commit to see a learner transform, would be as thin or meagre as the intervals between their deprived pleasures of virtual media posts.

The mirage of outcomes is then obfuscated by the next variant stimulus online, depriving the learner of essential transformations. Then like the proverbial opiate, the senses are invited to bursts of non-sustainable energies. Sensibility itself becomes the casualty. Reductionist symbolism, has its value nonetheless. It provides means of quick attention, requiring minimal effort. The shadow of such labourless pursuit of human development then raises its ugly head. The toxic manager, the petulant new employee and the dysfunctional team are ubiquitous. They are less featured on new media though. I am pretty sure you know what light to expect on contemporary media, instead.

The individual, team and organization has thus new manifestations of systems that maintain their behaviours. Their thresholds of perception are provoked by instant stimuli, although what they need are wholesome transformations. The medium and the message are awfully at odds. The penury of clarity in calling this out is stark among L&D professionals. So employees suffer ennui, and organizations shy from real and yet non-discussable truths.

In their anxiety to seem arrived on new platforms, L&D professionals have frittered away their raison d’etre in organizations to technology aided platforms. Disembodied from critical phenomena, they’re unable to influence their host paradigms, or to specify relevant outcomes in the new interactions between the numbed corporate citizen and the commerce of learning content.

Like the economy of nations, led by social media hungry leaders, the exasperation in seeing disappearing effect burgeons in organizational decline. That’s not the picture that you were presented with on the pushed content of the animation, was it? So, what would you look for and how would you go about it, if you’ve realized it is time to get out of your mind and come to your senses? May sensibility prevail!

Some Self-Management Lessons in my Generation

Recently, I got a call – out of the blue, “Joseph, I want a conversation, when can I call you?” It was a request for a longer conversation time with someone I knew for over 25 years. This college classmate was looking for some friendly advice on next steps in her career. She was not exactly directionless, nor was she without ambition. She was dexterously managing work-life balance as they say from a very gender-specific perspective. Just listening to her was impressive. She keeps her passion for a stamp on career even as she rears two children, and tends to her ageing parents in another city.

A day job at an organisation for over a decade, and yet, the search for near ultimate expression of a more accomplished capability was calling her. In the mid-40s, such a calling is often planning for the real life, after apprenticeship with the world’s ways. What she wanted was information on zoning in to home base – the launch-pad for career expression in contemporary India! It took me a while, and this event triggered a flashback into several of my classmates lives. What may they have been thinking around now? Such could be active imagination for the most part. But when it came to – there was a more essential reflection for me. I lay it out as below.

1.       Those who were academically frontrunners in the rat-race are not keeping up as much in social-media terms. They are either stuck in their clock rhythms of meritorious achievement in professional circuits or are being numbed by emerging trends for which no school prepared them.

2.       Meritorious rank-holders do not figure in the social ladder as much, irrespective of gender or profession. A few stalwarts senior to me in school have notched up positions of repute in the Big 5 consulting firms.

3.       A batch junior to me from school is more worldly connected with causes that partake of their near-anonymous generosity in education and employment generation in rural India. Few social networks break away from the occasional loafing from nuclear family to creating a worldwide community of elevated purpose.

4.       Bachelors got lonelier by their mid-40s not knowing whether their choices were worth their youthly bravado against the opposite sex.

5.       Substance abuse like alcohol and cigarettes were more likely if the conjugal bond were under strain for a while; and the habit kicked in in the early 20s itself.

6.       Divorces were more among the marriages which were consummated in the early 20s of life.

7.       The entrepreneurial among my classmates seem more emotionally mature too. Responsibility, self-dependence, and requisite networking are fair words of description. They are outwardly modest, humble and make for role models for me too.
SIMON SINEK ON PURPOSE or the WHY of LIFE

8.       Classmates, whose parents had marital discomfort, have chronic issues in understanding themselves. They struggle to be free from parental tensions even late in adult life, and are lonelier than they may admit to the few they are in touch with.

9.       Classmates, who married early, tend to have more marital discord and career adjustments to make than those who married later. Having integrated merely in the shallow regions of either gender, the journey to the deep end of the opposite gender is a lifetime in the making. The humility and honesty to self-reflect eludes those who set themselves up in teen-age romantic imaginations. Their facades are apparent to me as they project their anxieties and unmet aspirations through their children.

10.   Female Classmates who married early include a minority whose male spouses dominate their choices so blatantly, that they unconsciously introject the unreasonable male aggression as part of their persona. This has robbed us of their original grace and beauty of character. Their children suffer from low self-esteem and side with their ill-supported and hapless mothers. Their male spouses fantasise dominance and face scant censure or correction from family or therapy.

11.   Those who were academically dull, are also doing well at life, some of them thriving better than the most brilliant in class. They seem to be more complete in their equipment for a fuller life than the academically forward ones.

12.   Like in most analyses, there are outliers and outliers. One such lives a relatively hermit life, growing organic produce on agricultural land, without a care for material oomph or prestige symbols of the rat-race he fell out of.  To me he is a stoic reminder of human grit. And choice!

TONY D'MELLO ON De-addiction from DEPENDENCE

A school Principal who passed away earlier this year once told me “Life without ideals impoverishes practice. It robs you of meaning in life”. As products of our time, I reflect and realize that most of my generation wound their time-clocks to the reductionary ideals of a job. Irrespective of how high-paying a job was, few have struck a life of purpose, beyond the contours of a job.

However, I must admit hearing from CEO classmates of an itch that tells them that something is missing. One of them came close to calling it quits, but hangs on not as much for dear life, as much as for certitude that his family may want. Pushing beyond that point has been a challenge for most in my generation, and time leaves its imprint on us in cohorts as it were.

As I write this, I also admit to a realisation that generations that succeeded us strike their Purpose questions in their mid-30s. Whether this has meant more stress and strain of coping or the early arrival of life’s opportunities is unclear to me. Has the Purpose question hit you deep? Taking a leaf from Master John Scherer, I ask as below :

1.       What inside you calls out to be expressed into the world?

2.       What in you must be manifest in whatever work you do?

3.       What would you be willing to do, even if you did not get paid for it?

4.       What does your being alive and on earth make possible?

5.       What do you feel? Does it not score over what you think?

To my classmates, a special mention – 

What will you let go of, that you will open up to yourself now? 

Go for it!

July Monsoon Musings

Attachment is the root of sorrow. Ambition that reeks of unfulfilled desire may be a symptom of attachment, the shadow side of ambition or the unresolved self.

Detachment is the beginning of equanimity. Neither attachment nor detachment can be known without knowing the other. The joy from detachment is not a pursuit to be enslaved to - nor the sorrow from attachment a burden to despise.

Love transcends both these as the decision of giving all of oneself in service. As Mother Teresa once said "When we judge we have no time to love".  Love is the decision that liberates us from trapped potential.

Love that is effective is a result of calibrating for rapport - a state in which nether party in the relationship judges each other. Loving the self is also a calibration of mind, body and emotion. That is why even if it is logically possible to love another, it is psychologically impossible to do so without loving one's own self.

Compassion is empathetic acceptance rooted in trust of the unknowable. It is a product of vulnerability and vulnerability is an act of conscious will.

Happiness is the uncaused ecstasy of traversing in surrender to mystic depths.

Awareness is communion with the unconscious, united through mind, body and emotion.

Dealing with Introverts? - Work through their Unconscious Biases

My English teacher in school S Swamy, was a teacher of norms as well. “Beware of the wrath of a patient man” he would tell fidgety, talkative and restless students. A patient person is often associated with being reserved most of the time, offering little expression even in the face of adversity. In a knowledge economy, harvesting the introverts is the new secret sauce. Those who interact with introverts do not draw them out purposefully. Introverts are a highly misunderstood lot. It is easy to dismiss the challenge by blaming it on them, as if they ‘deserved’ it. While it is true that they earn the consequences of their choicest silences, it does not equate as a sentient justice system on the laws of interaction.

I recollect essaying a treatment of polarities based on Dr. Hogan’s Unconscious Bias scheme. Let me attempt to review these as a dilemma point that the introvert experiences now.

Unconscious Biases	Theme	For the Introvert
Recognition	Wanting to be the center of attention, assuming that other people need attention as much as you do, and not understanding modesty.	Wanting to avoid attention, assuming that others respect privacy as much as you as you do your own, without understanding the impact of recognition through attention seeking or being able to face the consequence of immodesty
Power	Wanting to dominate or enforce actions to make a difference, assuming that other people are as competitive as you, and disliking people who lack a winning attitude.	Not wanting to domineer while differentiating through an expertise edge; assuming that other people value meekness as you do, and disliking therefore people who want to win  by parading their wares unabashedly
Hedonism	Wanting to have fun and share experiences, assuming that other people are as fun seeking as you, and not understanding people who are overly serious.	Wanting to be conserved in energy and reserved in expression, assuming other people value intense internal reflection, and not preferring the abandon of compulsively fun-seeking people.
Altruism	Wanting to help those who are disadvantaged or victimized, assuming that others are as concerned about them as you, and not understanding the need for self-reliance	Wanting to be self-reliant and thereby competent in one’s self-efficacy; assuming that others are as self-reliant and independent, at times at the cost of not detecting opportunities that other people engage in to assist lesser advantaged people.
Affiliation	Wanting opportunities to network, assuming that others want to interact as much as you do, and not understanding people who don’t want to be part of something bigger than themselves.	Wanting to be insular and self-protective, limited in one’s free-willed interactions; not relating accurately with others who wish to be part of other people networks as an opportunity to be bigger than themselves
Tradition	Respecting hierarchy, rules, and tradition, assuming that others are as compliant and demonstrative of compliance as you, and openly disapproving of any kind of non-conformity.	Irreverent of conformity and rules, assuming that others too wish to overcome rules and tradition, inwardly contemplative of actions of those who respect hierarchy to preserve traditions.
Security	Disliking risk-taking and risky activities, assuming that others are as overtly cautious as you, and not understanding people who enjoy uncertainty and like to test the limits without much publicity.	Embracing risky activities without much ado. Discerning of risks that seem attention grabbing, cordoning oneself off from needless impulse, and yet giving in at times to private joys of experimenting when no one is watching.
Commerce	Wanting to acquire concrete symbols of success, assuming that others are as materialistic as you, and not understanding people who are indifferent to money.	In    Indifferent to money and material acquisition, assuming that others are as frugal as you; and not understanding people who want to acquire concrete symbols of success.
Aesthetics	Wanting to be in attractive environments, assuming that others care as much about quality as you, and not understanding people who lack a sense of style.	:  Not obviously discriminating of detail in sub-modalities like visual acuity in shapes, colors, sizes or olfactory variety in cuisine and odors..
Science	Wanting to solve problems with logic and data, assuming others care as much about finding the right answers as you, and not understanding irrational or intuitive decisions.	W   Reserved in judgment, but thought through in implications, the introvert may prefer writing out one’s reasoning, so as to accomplish the exhaustiveness of logic, than spending energy in striking equity by talking logic with others.

Introverts are often on the cusp of transformation, if not deep into several transformative forces, that those whom they interact with can seldom fathom. The transformative energy resides in desired sense of balance in dysfunctional and opposite ‘cause’ motivations as the ones described above. In order to get better yield out of introverts, here’s my list of guidelines – does not matter what end of the expression spectrum you are – introvert or extrovert.

·         Make a hypothesis. Talk it with the introvert. Lay it for him in chunks that begin with the highest order of statement, followed by its descending components. He/she the introvert will respect your intellect. If you’re off the mark, stop hypothesizing. Reflect on your mistake, and offer your statement of ignorance as authentically as you can. Pause for that near-death silence. Bury your thought, and watch the other’s rise as a phoenix from your ashes. Then patiently watch the shift of energy in the conversation.

·         Empathize with the introvert’s special interests. Place or position statements that entice the internally excited mind to give vent to such thoughts. Draw the conversationalist in the introvert out like you lead a baby to walk – teasingly, and yet, letting the little leading finger go, when the rapport has been confidently struck.

·         Listen when the introvert talks. The intensity of the introvert’s disclosure is a matter to be respected. Fly in the face of adversity you will, if you do not appreciate the passion that flows on the tongue owned by a pent-up mind.

·         If you are not in the habit of reading, discipline your mind to read on the introvert’s areas of interest. Better to strike a liking based on mutual awareness, than to offer a pat during meal time, merely to register an association with someone – in this case the reclusive introvert.

·         Write objectively about your introvert friend. Crisp, clear and concrete descriptions for the laser-logical guy, and a narrative emotional and variously described text for the intuitive introvert. They do not like inefficiency and lack of focus in feedback. They value precision and depth. What is more, they can discern precision from accuracy!

Let me know what you think.