Footprints on the Mountainside

Children naturally enjoy the outdoors. Apart from exercise, and health, adventure education helps children develop natural resilience from experience. Learning through experience is a natural state of being for a child, and while imparting information and training is necessary, it is important that a child gets to explore the world on his or her own terms, learning to cope with consequences or celebrate them from personal experience.

A young girl on one of my camps was rapt with attention during the introductory rappelling session. She came up with this exact question “Do soldiers use these same tactical rappelling techniques?” Tactical rappelling techniques!!! I had never considered this term before.

Another child from the same session asked “Why do we call abseiling rappelling?”

The questions in themselves are not particularly significant. No particular knowledge is involved, and knowing those particular answers is not going to change anyone’s life.

What I found satisfying about them was that “my kids” had stopped simply swallowing information, and were now exploring it.

There seems to be an impression floating around in companies that serious training happens indoors, and outbounds are for having fun.

While ther is nothing wrong with having fun in the outdoors, I find it disturbing to see such programmes called training programmes.

Somewhere, I find that this reinforces an unconscious desire in participants to resist change and is harmful for the overall learning environment of the organization. Most of the outbound training enquiries I get focus on the “activities”. The more exciting, the better, the more exotic, the more adventurous, the more…. something-or-the-other. Pursuit of adventure is fabulous. I make money from it. But why wrap it up as a self-development programme or management training?

From a very simple angle, you get to save money from the trainer’s fees as well as training session time to invest fully into the desired adventure experience. From a deeper angle, there is no pretense - there is a certain honesty to going after what is really desired.

I suspect some of this is about “We have a training budget….” as an HR professional had candidly explained to me. Stated almost directly in that conversation was the objective that they wish to utilize the training budget so that it doesn’t get cut down, but they really don’t have any training in mind at the moment.

What I find telling in this is the inability to see beyond fixed concepts. This is a rigidity in perspective that is only manifesting itself with me in this way in the first fifteen minutes of conversation. What is this rigidity doing everyday, to the person, to the people who are influenced by their choices and to the organization?

How do I see this rigidity? I see it when an entire document about training is read and the important issues for discussion are about travel, accommodation, activities and food. I see it when outbound training becomes a way of organizing an outing under training budgets. I see it when there isn’t the least curiosity about if an outbound training programme is a new service called thus to provide that utility of training budget, or if it really has any value to deliver.

Of course, not all companies are like that. I have conducted programmes where participants on the outbound actually needed to be told to lighten up and go with the flow, because they were so focussed on learning, that they were almost unable to “be”.

And I have found the perfect participants as well - people who had arrived with full knowledge that they were out on training, and knew that they would be spending time in the outdoors and were fine with seeing what happened with the flow.

Why do I call these the perfect participants? Because they are utilizing their value for money, because they are investing their time actively and because it brings me a glow of pride in being able to work with them, to see their transformations and celebrate being a part of it. It brings me a high to see the changes being wrought still alive in participants when I meet them on some future programme….

It brings me the joy of having companions along on a journey of discovery, and I find few things that are headier than that.

I don’t know if this can really be called road rage, but something happened today, that got me concerned about how we act….

I was travelling to Powai from Borivli in  rickshaw for a session by Sankar on learning styles (that’s another post). I enjoy interacting with different people, and I was chatting happily with the rickshaw driver, when a motorcycle zipped past and overtook us from the wrong side. As the car in front of us slowed (for reasons unknown), the driver braked in panic, and this poor motorcycle guy was hit by our rickshaw.

I am not aware of the exact sequence of happenings, but it was abundantly clear that the guy lying flat on the road was suffering the consequences of his own “reckless driving”. The rickshaw driver and I got out of the rick as the guy struggled to disentangle himself from the bike. Thanks to the crawling pace of Mumbai’s traffic and the additional braking spree that happened just before he was hit, he was relatively unhurt except for a very bad scrape that was bellding quite heavily on his left forearm and  the matching side of his trousers damaged beyond repair. I’d call it getting off scot free compared with what could have happened.

Seeing the guy bleeding, I stepped forward to see if I could help, but my driver reached him first, and it was then I realized that the two of us had come out for different reasons. The driver collared this biker and hauled him to his feet and was just about to beat him up, when I interrupted him.

“Boss roko!!! Ise maar kyun rahe ho?” I asked - Boss, wait!!! Why are you hitting him?

“Madam, aapne dekha nahi, kaisi gaadi chala raha tha? Accident kota to?” he replied - madam, didn’t you see how he was driving? What if there had been an accident?

“Accident to hua. Galati uski thi, par bhugat bhi wohi raha hai. AAP use kyon maar rahe ho? Use pehlehi chot lagi hai.” I said - The accident did happen. It was his fault, and he is suffering the consequences. You or your vehicle or passenger suffered no damage. Why are you hitting him? He is already injured.”

The driver stared at me in amazement. It was clear from his expression that he honestly had no clue why he was hitting the guy beyond that that “it was what was supposed to happen” - in Mumbai, mobs sometimes bash up the offender when reckless driving endangers lives. Worse, my tone with him was also not that of anger… which was the standard tone of the innocent party after an accident…. I was sounding merely curious. He had no clue how to proceed in such a situation.

The cowering biker who was mumbling “sorry…. sorry” looked at me in equal amazement. It didn’t really fit his framework of “public behaviour” to be shown concern when he had caused an accident. His entire body language spoke of the acceptance that he was going to be beaten up.

I stood there, wondering what was wrong with this world, if people don’t even need to have a reason to hit a person who is already injured. I could see how shaken the poor chap was, and didn’t see the point moving his attention from the magnitude of his consequences toward being defensive in some conflict. Plus, how would hitting him add any value to what was happening? He had experienced the consequences of rash driving first hand, and I doubt if he needed anything explained at that point. What he did need was first-aid.

Such incidents happen in our lives daily. Be it aggressive people in buses, or riots after taking offense. I really see no meaning to this behaviour, except a declaration of a total lack of caring for the people around us.

Once, I got into a train to get off at Borivli. It was a Virar train. For those unfamiliar with Mumbai, Virar is further than Borivli, has fewer trains which are invariably crowded, and their passengers tend to be hostile to passengers who could use more frequent trains using these unnecessarily. It being a holiday and all, I thought it wouldn’t matter, and the train seemed to have space. This is the ladies compartment.

As I neared the door when Borivli came closer, one of the women grabbed my arm and pulled me back roughly. I asked her to let go, and she returned abuse. Her point was that I need to be punished for using that train. Standard punishment is that the person is not allowed to get off the train until Borivli is crossed, which gives the offender an experience of the inconvenience of the train frequency and a fear/understanding of the situation for further reference.

I do respect and fully appreciate the difficulties these people go through, but I didn’t see how this mattered in a train with plenty of space on it (by Mumbai standards). When this woman tried to manhandle me, I broke out of her hold, and simply pushed her away from me. I look deceptively tiny, and this woman was a heavy weight, but I have a whole load of pushing experience from 7 years of grooming and working with horses. She was lighter than a horse, she moved very easily, which put her off getting physical with me, and she satisfied her “outrage” by screaming abuse at me for the next 5 minutes till I got off.

Other women around rolled their eyes and made faces - all regulars on the same train. This woman stood there sweating and looking so unreasonably angry that she looked insane. She refused to respond to anything I or the other women said and just spewed hatred. That’s how I remember her as the train pulled out of the station…… sweating, red in the face, screaming abuse, and dressed like a middle class conservative woman…. I just wondered how frustrating her life must be, if she needed strangers to vent on…. travelling for about 3-4 hours everyday just to reach work and back…… I couldn’t find anger in me for her…. I was concerned.

Where does this anger come from? Why do we care so little about the people in out world?

APJ Kalam never fails to amaze me with the depth of his understanding, insights, and the caring that comes through so clearly in his words. This article from him is something I truly respect and hold close to my heart, rather than in high esteem. Esteem is cerebral, this truly touches me, and inspires me to see things in a more meaningful way.

Read more… »

This post could be considered the ultimate guide to professional excellence, or any relationship for that matter. Why do I call professional excellence a relationship? Because it is. What you do, is important, but it is how people see it that matters - that’s how it is about relationship.

1. Get over your obsession with presenting perfection already. For one, it is too open to interpretation, and thus too vague in terms of what needs to be done. Instead, get obsessed with initiative. Attempts to be perfect block most of our initiative and leave us anxious. Learn to accept that you are doing what you think is best, and if it doesn’t turn out to be so, you then know that for sure, rather than imagining consequences and fearing them. <— this is not as easy as it sounds.
2. Embrace the goals you have committed to. This means, don’t take the lazy man’s way just because what seems best looks tough. Doesn’t matter if it is finding the strength to run an extra mile for your weight loss goal, or doing extra research to bring in thought provoking perspectives for that corporate presentation. It is about adopting the goal in your heart, and making the effort to stand by it through tough terrain.
3. Don’t panic. It is those who try who fail, or succeed. Know that you have tried, and respect yourself for it, even if things fail, because failures when accepted and learned from bring great strength and sure knowledge of what to avoid.
4. Acknowledge the people you are with. This doesn’t mean mindless agreement. It is simply acknowledging that they see things in a certain way, or feel strongly about certain things, regardless of whether you agree or don’t. Accept that they have their own stands which are as valid for them, as they are for you.
5. Throw those approvals and disapprovals out. They do more harm than good, because you end up constantly judging people rather than understanding them.
6. Standing up in the face of all for what you believe in takes courage, but is counter-productive, if it means that you end up deciding for everyone (or attempting to). It helps to present your stand on it, and your feelings about it. “Let us throw away the current policy on tea breaks - people are getting lazy” may not be as effective as “I see the tea breaks disrupting our schedule, and few of us seem to want tea at that time. Can we re-look at them and see if we can come up with something that suits us better? I suggest….”
7. Contribute, don’t dictate.
8. Don’t just agree, act. Agreement is passivity. Action is what causes positive change.
9. Try and be sensitive to the state of being of the person you are with. A colleague who looks harassed has a concern you could perhaps help him with, rather than as him to review your latest invention.
10. Blame alienates and frustrates - even blaming yourself. Learn to see the person as a whole that is much more than a specific action.

Not as simple as it looks.