Footprints on the Mountainside

Ugh, this is an extremely wise post from me based on years and years of actual experience. I have learnt that with hugs, what you see, is rarely what you get. I’d like to illustrate some of the salient hug species we see commonly. I say species because after all this time, I have begun suspecting that they have a life of their own.

1. The Affection hug: This is usually initiated by one participant while the other enjoys receiving it. I like this kind of hug and its sub-types: protective, funny and emotional affection hugs.
2. The Space-War hug: This is initiated by the dominant person in a conversation and stated as an affectionate gesture, but one only needs to look at the poor stiff or squirming or uninterested recipient to know how much affection is being conveyed. Such a hug is basically the dominant person’s way of entering the poor victim’s personal space at will. I’d call it an attack.
3. The Obligatory hug: This is the beginning-of-meeting, end-of-meeting, when-we-meet, when-we-part variety of hug - like the Italians saying “ciao” or Spitians saying “Jule” - means everything from “hi” to “Bye”
4. The When-in-doubt hug: This hug is commonly seen after a disagreement or confrontation is mediated by a facilitator, when neither party is comfortable exploring their experience of the conflict. There is a spontaneous need to hug. Such a hug is also called the “Band-Aid” hug.
5. The reflected glory hug: Where you go and hug someone who is very powerful or well-liked, and let the world know that that person is your pal.
6. The sorry hug: Where you hug someone rather than do whatever they want you to do (mostly because hugging takes the lesser effort of the two.
7. The I-can-hug-too hug: The entire world seems to be in love with each other and rather than figure out why, you begin hugging people too.

Ooops! Need to go. Will come back with more info tomorrow.

Feel free to share your own pearls of learning in the comments.

Many people attend programmes with shoes that slip, are tight, are too fancy to wreck in the mud…….

I thought a quick post to point people to would help me by removing the necessity of repeating this information all the time.

1. NEVER wear shoes for the first time when you are walking for hours at a time and can’t change them if they get uncomfortable. Break your shoes in gently (for your feet - shoes don’t feel). Use them for shorter trips before heading out for that week long extreme trek.
2. ALWAYS walk on a variety of surfaces - rough, smooth, marble, stony, wet, etc. to check for slipping.
3. Buy shoes in the evening when your feet are slightly bigger than in the morning from standing all day.
4. The shoes should fit comfortably. By this, I mean a soft cushioning around your feet so that they are neither gripped by the shoe, nor rattling from the extra space.
5.  For treks and situations where you expect to do a lot of walking, thick soles work well.
6. Some people prefer hard soles, others don’t. You will need to find out from experience.
7. COTTON SOCKS and plenty of them, please! You don’t want to get those nice shoes smelly, and your companions unconscious.
8. Floaters or slippers to wear on the campsite. I mention these and the socks in this list, because they are an important part of a comfortable experience with trekking shoes.
9. Expensive or cheap is not always the most comfortable. Experiment with different brands and types of shoes to experience what makes you happiest.
10. Care for your shoes as you would care for a car. Checking condition, waterproofing, cleaning and other small bits of attention ensure that your shoes don’t end up surprising you in a way you don’t like when in action.

If you think this list is silly, try being in my shoes where every programme has a percentage of participants not happy about their footwear (or me not happy with theirs - in the case of high heeled sandals - because the climbing site was near a beach), or try getting embarrassed participants to talk about fungal infections on feet when they want first aid.

In every organization, we have the odd success story of a person who rose through the ranks like a comet. As a trainer, the most popular question we get asked is how people can be made to perform at full potential.

Unfortunately, there is no answer that can be an instant solution - do this, and every person in your organization will be a genius. It just doesn’t exist.

So what is it that these stars have that others don’t?

For one, they have passion. When they find something they want, they go for it. When they find something they don’t like, they give everything in them to change it. Is it any wonder that they are on the pulse of whatever it is that they handle? They either are in love with it, or have created it, or know it in and out in their efforts to cause a change.

Another thing these people have is self-driven ambition. Being better than the next employee is irrelevant. What they are really competing with is their vision of how they could be at full potential.

How can this be brought into training? A simple answer would be - “It can’t”. However, that is not true either. People change. I believe that this is one shift that could at the most be inspired by someone, but the urge to walk the road is from the person walking it. It is not even a decision that a person can make, but a need inside. All the training in the world can only create some dream of this. Whether the dream fuels action when the person is on his own is what separates the stars from the masses.

Where could this journey begin? Right here. Right now. There is no rocket science to it. All it takes is being aware of yourself. Being aware of where you excel, what could be better, asking for feedback and absorbing it.

The most difficult thing in this journey is probably recognizing failure. Most corporate employees today have an inherent phobia of failure. When a situation doesn’t work as expected, a blame game follows. The brief was inadequate, time fell short, so-and-so goofed up, we didn’t have enough people…. and so on. Yet, there are also stories filled with pride about old successes where the brief called for guesswork and tarot cards, the project was due “yesterday”, everything that could go wrong went wrong, resources were short…… but the job was done. There is a reluctance to come out and say “the job was not done”, even when it wasn’t, where the simple statement gets replaced by miles of explanations, excuses and jargon, till the original subject of conversation is safely forgotten. This is an option - a comfortable one, but it doesn’t work for one who wishes to be a self-coched climber, because until you know what to fix, there is no “climbing” possible.

A difficult but necessary move is to strip the sugar coating and speak of the results as they are. Explanations have a valid place in the reflection and planning for changes - NOT in measuring results.

Another difficulty is in relating with people. The more we want something, the easier it gets to forget that others around us have things they care about too. One possibility is to step on toes, but unless you don’t need any relationship with them (work or personal), its going to come right back and step on yours. It is a conscious choice to explore how things different people want could fit in together and work out in a way that helps everyone. And guess what, the person to initiate this would be called a leader, no?

And so on. Its really about being aware and fixing what doesn’t work, and experimenting and taking risks and owning the results. Everyone goofs up. Its the risks that work that make you a star!

Just back from a training programme for Prolite Autoglow. This company manufactures emergency signs. A family run concern, it is now expanding into a limited company and the family wishes to include their original staff on this journey. Needless to say, its a big shift. The organization has a strong hierarchy, even though there is great warmth.

As a facilitator, it was a challenge for me to get people to see beyond their roles. Yet, the flexibility with which the participants adapted to the training programme, and their willingness to experiment, once they realized its value had me humbled.

As a professional, this was the greatest change I had witnessed from the start of a programme to the end. It served to reinforce my belief that as long as there is a will, change will happen and it will be for the better.

The group began with a very strong sense of roles and definite boundaries between the “labour” and the “elite”. The people lower down the ladder were not used to providing inputs and contributing to the progress of a task, while they excelled at following directions exactly as told. The ones higher up the ladder were not very experimental in their approach and very often the first option to occur to a “leader” was the one the team followed without exploring possibilities.

It was difficult to get people to explore their potential beyond what they were used to doing. Yet, with the coming change in the organization, their roles were headed toward a change.

We experimented with discussions in small groups, examining contributions and their relation with the satisfaction derived from success and a variety of approaches. By the end of the next day, the group was functioning far smoother, and had got used to being aware of how they functioned, resulting in escalating change and eagerness to take their new learnings even further.

In India, the corporate scenario rarely uses outbound training as a genuine organizational intervention and objectives are mostly “fun and excitement” with little, if any focus on objectives beyond that. This programme was a low budget programme conducted with an objective to help employees function more “professionally” than their usual family run scenario. It was a low budget programme and a leap of faith. This difference is what contributes to results.

It is the intention that leads to results, and I am very happy for this group, for they have gained something of far greater value than many of the 5 star programmes with jaded participants eager only for their dose of adrenaline and organizers who would like to justify training budgets while keeping employees relaxed and unchallenged.