Footprints on the Mountainside

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.

Just returning from another programme for Patni Computers. It went well. Far better than we expected actually, considering the size and difficulty in managing the group we had experienced the last time.

It was a two day thing. We had gone in expecting a recreation programme, but when we spoke with their representative, we discovered that there were specific expectations from the programme and it would be need to give it a training slant to the proceedings.

It was a difficult call for me to make, as it being a fun programme, participant expectations would not be toward learning. Particularly considering that some of the senior members seemed determined to take the whole thing as a joke. Honestly, I have no clue how we managed it, but somewhere down the line, we figured that fun and learning are not mutually exclusive, and then we took off into true experiential mode. I had a blast, and from the feedback we received, so did the participants.

And it was productive. For a quick two day thing with limited time, we managed to go through quite a bit in terms of behavioural learnings.

And I learnt a new lesson. An unruly but enthusiastic group may be difficult to handle, but once channelized, the potential for learning, even amidst chaos is huge as compared with a obedient but cold group in terms of energy.

Ah, what do I say, the growth pangs of a young company are torture indeed. I’m in the process of negotiating a deal for outbound soft skills training for a BPO. Money is a crunch, and they want the world as always, but what’s more annoying is that they want really safe “high
adventures”.

In the clients words, “Most of us have never been in the outdoors, so we want to experience something really dangerous and spectacular” and in the same breath, “it shouldn’t be too scary”.

I think they want to have some kind of a good time in the outdoors, but as usual, the focus is on the adventure rather than the learning.

That’s fine. I guess I’ll just need to show them some fancy pictures
and some explanations on actual and perceived risk.

Let’s see how it goes.

I am planning to conduct some outdoor experiential learning programmes specially for couples this year. I saw a need, when I caught an angry exchange between a husband and wife there the wife accused the husband of neglecting her in favour of his friends, and the husband claimed that she just wasn’t “on the same frequency”.

This is very similar to problems we see in corporate and other training programmes, yet, there is hardly anything that targets such an important intimate relationship in terms of facilitating harmony. The more i thought on this exchange, the more I was convinced that it is definitely worthwhile to invest time in ensuring quality relationships with our spouses.

To plan for the programme, which by now was inevitable (in my mind), I decided to focus on common areas of difficulty in husband-wife relationships, so that they could allow me a framework to plan my programmes around. Here is a list of what I see as the cheif hurdles to harmoniour co-existence in couples.

1. Great expectations of an ideal: These are actually stereotypes. Their chief problem is their unrealstic nature. Those ideals are not based on the person they are applied to and therefore are often seen as accusations when lack is expressed. This includes everyday things like “You should keep the house tidy” or exotic ones like “If you loved me, you would…..” The bottom line is that we can expect something from people, but expecting from concepts is always going to create fitting problems when we attempt to apply them to real people. It would be far better to expect from a person, and be willing to make an investment of personal effort to come half way. eg. “I think that if we work together, the house can be tidied quite easily” and then proceed to walk your talk.
2. Immersion in “roles”: When people start playing and seeing the role, more than the person. When Anna becomes “my wife” more often than Anna the person. This kind of brings a certain anonymity to feelings. You may feel anything about Anna, but as your wife, this is what you think of her. The problem with this is that if you do it often enough, poor Anna has no way of knowing if you even think of her any more, or is she only a wife now? How many of us honestly make continuing efforts to keep discovering new interests and experiences our spouses collect? Do we really love some person who is now obsolete and is replaced by someone with different interests and more experience than we think?
3. Taking for granted: Small things that attracted the couple together start becoming the background music, and the search is on, for a “spark of novelty”. The whimsical nature that once charmed, is now the usual when it does something outstanding, and the ultimate carelessness when it fails. The effort to find novel details in what we find charming is often replaced by an effort to find something altogether different. Well….. common sense tells me, if I have an apple, I can look forward to its taste, its smell, some apple cider, an apple tree….. and so on. There is a problem, if I hold an apple and search for the scent of citrus, while ignoring the apple smell, because its always there.
4. Lack of creative expression: This is when efforts to convey a point stop considering it worthwhile to explore ways of communicating that will lead to maximum acceptance or an effort to make them interesting. Facts stated, and to hell with how they are perceived. What happened to the time, when you even dressed to tempt, and paid attention to everything you did and said, to please and gain acceptance. Why expect the fascination the efforts earned for you, if those efforts are now absent? It was a result of what you did. You do it again, and you’ll see the results again.
5. Insufficient communication: Very often, small irritations are not addressed until they become big issues. Small things are easier to deal with, than greater things. It is far more easy to say “Please call if you’re going to be late” than reach a position where you need to say “You never care that there is someone waiting for you at home”. It is a worthwhile initiative in terms of hurt for both. I may not realise that I am doing something that hurts you, but if you point it out and I see that it hurts you, I am unlikely to want to do it regardless of what you feel. But if I am in the habit of doing something that turns out to be something that has been hurting you for a long time, I am likely to feel left out that you didn’t feel close enough to tell me so, until you were forced by circumstances.
6. Auto-pilot: The married life becomes the launch pad for “real life”, where the married life ceases to be a significant facet of life and is simply consigned to “situation”. Well…. situation it is. However, this simplification overlooks that it is a situation you want. Overlook it often enough, and it will cease to matter. If the home is consistently considered to be a “non-happening” place of stability, it does help by making us more stable and balanced in our interactions with the world. But this source of stability also needs updates, if it is to work as planned. You cannot take a snapshot and hide behind it until eternity. For the home to truly bring that balance into our lives, we need to be alert to the stuff happening inside it. To see what is not working, to figure it out, to keep relationships fresh and involved, so that they are close by us. It is not the walls that are the home, it is the people in it and you’re one of them.
7. Independent dreams: Well… dreams are always personal, but when we fail to communicate them with our spouses, until the first concrete action is taken, they suddenly leave the spouses out of the process, and turn them into spectators. In such a situation, i would feel completely left out and considered incapable of being trusted with dreams and plans or of constructive contribution. I would have felt that I was being considered irrelevant to the core wishes of my spouse and that would definitely have hurt me and made me feel unsure of what could turn up later.
8. Acceptance of failure: We wouldn’t dream of accepting that we failed at work and meekly resign. Yet, many couples accept that they failed as a couple and contemplate divorce/seperation. No relationship worth having comes easy. To a certain extent, maybe, but if one has to go beyond that, it takes considerable skill and efforts. Accepting failure is simply admitting that you cannot get along well with someone on a close level. I fail to see how “people change” is applicable to such a great extent in explaining away this failure. Where were you when the people were changing that you couldn’t adapt to it? Professional scenarios change far more frequently, and you don’t even get to live with them. Yet, it is interest that sustains this constant adaptation, and if you cannot sustain interest in a spouse you fell in love with, it is indeed a failure - a failure to take relationships beyond the initial levels. Divorce may seem an easy option, but it doesn’t teach you anything expect “running away worked” and you run the same risk, until you learn to be careful to keep a caring eye on the relationship.
9. Greener pastures: There is a certain ease and novelty in new relationships, that seems far more attainable than sustaining a relationship. The tempting “start with a clean slate” attitude fails to take into consideration, that every relationship will progress to deeper and more difficult levels. One can constantly keep making fresh beginnings that pose less risk, but these willl also bring less stability, until they can be enriched to a certain level. Most relationships I see failing are more out of personal shortcomings than incompatibility, and these problems will haunt the person until he or she learns to deal with them.
10. The evil of compromise: Compromise is an essential aspect of life. It is easy to compromise on smaller things than take hold of ourselves firmly and make the compromises that matter. A compromise that works as a temporary patch to a lasting problem is very tempting to make, but hardly helps in the long run, while a compromise that fixes an issue well is difficult to identify and commit to, because if often brings a sense of “losing” an argument. Quick fix compromises need regular patch ups, while the more difficult ones last longer, but are difficult to make in the first place. It takes a lot of courage to resolve a difficult situation through compromise.

Enough said, I think.

Very often, when I conduct programmes for run of the mill employees in smaller businesses, a recurring dissatisfaction for employers seems to be a lack of motivation and initiative among employees. Employees on the other hand, seem to think themselves “doing what they are paid for” and feel it is unfair of employeers to be constantly applying pressure for performance. Not that anyone says it in so many words….

This mismatch of expectations and delivery mints me a fortune, yet it is such an obvious thing, that sometimes I wonder why people can’t see it.

If you buy an apple, you get to eat an apple. If you want an orange, that’s what you have to set out to buy as well. Yet, I find such a basic thing missing in practical life.

I have seen hiring scenarios, where “dependable”, “qualified” and “budget” rule. The eccentric geniuses are walked by, in favour of the “stable” guys. Paper qualifications are important, as is not spending too much. Why would someone you hire in such a scenario turn out to be a creative genius at work? If he has all the qualifications, but is willing to come cheap, surely, it doesn’t make him an equal in terms of delivery with the dream employee in your mind, who you can’t afford - of course. I fail to see where is the problem. You are eating the apples you purchased.

The truth is, that many small employers would prefer to get someone inexpensive and spend time and money grooming this person into the dream employee. I have even seen plenty of “management training” businesses do this. So many people do this all the time, that it never ceases to surprise me that this “method” is still in practice after a consistent record of unsatisfactory results. Goes to show that temptation goes beyond rational behaviour.

What happens in practice is that the work in terms of quantity as well as quality delivered by this budget employee is far less than the dream one, even if there were a ratio to be considered. That dream guy could replace three of these and still find time to skip off home early everyday. Yet, the temptation of “saving money” works each time. Now the employer is not satisfied with his apples, because they don’t taste like his favourite or