Mentor or Tormentor?

The whole of May we have been exploring the topic Mentoring and it was interesting to see a lot of questions/discussions/doubts/differences around this topic. What was gratifying for me was the feeling that I got uniformly from all sessions about the importance of the mentoring process, along with the dismay that there simply not enough mentoring and not enough volunteers to mentor!
It is important here to differentiate between coaching and mentoring although there's a school of thought that will disagree and disapprove of my distinction between the two. To me coaching is all about a specific skill - where there's a skill gap or knowledge gap, a coach comes in to fill this gap with his/her expertise in this area. For eg a cricket coach, a tuition master ( I have lots of whining to do about this later in this blog)CAT/IIT coaching centres, etc.An IPL coach now coaches his batsmen on how to sledge the ball over the fence - thats the new cricket as we now see it!
Mentoring is a lot deeper and has got to do with "teaching a man how to fish" versus coaching which is giving a man fish to eat!
Mentoring is all about influencing the "Being" of the person, while "Coaching" is all about the "Doing" of the person.
Coaching can be forced - mentoring cannot. A mentee must "want" to be mentored and a mentor must earn the trust and respect of the mentee without which it just does not work.
While Parenting should ideally be all about mentoring, parents have become coaches of their children with a vengeance! An anxious mother called me the other day and wanted me to suggest some class for her 14 year old who has a little gap in his week which she would like to fill up! Chemistry/Physics/Maths tuition, tennis coaching, karate classes, keyboard classes not to mention early CAT/IIT coaching. Mentoring has been delegated to the "idiot box"!
In this fast paced, quadrant 1 kind of lifestyle, Q2 focus areas like mentoring are disappearing and at this rate we will only groom more and more transactional managers who are "tormentors" of short term results rather than long term people leaders!
Anybody ready to volunteer as mentors? I have enough mentees crying for this kind of guidance!

ATM Any Time Motivator

I am suggesting that we design and install ATM's in organizations - Any Time Motivators! Where employees can insert their IDs and hear some praise from their bosses - pre recorded. I am even thinking of an advanced ATM where a robotic arm comes out and pats the employee on their shoulder!

Why this sorry state of affairs when it comes to employee motivation?

Why are Indian managers so stingy with praise and so liberal with criticism? I often ask participants in my session whether there's anyone in the room who has received too much praise in their organizations. Are they thinking of quitting their jobs because they are fed up with being praised all the time? In my 15 years of asking this question not one hand has gone up!I have often wondered why it is so difficult for managers to give appreciation to team members? Is it that we dont think it is important? We pay our people good salaries, they are supposed to do their job - what else do they want?

Perhaps it has to do with our up bringing. I remember my Dad would tell nice things about his children to other people and not to us!And we would hear about what he said from friends/relatives!There is a school of thought that praising people too much would make them arrogant and hence complacent.One must always keep people on a tight leash and keep them guessing about their performance.

Zig Ziglar said that while there are a lot of people who go to sleep hungry for food, there are millions who go to sleep hungry for a word of praise! We are like sponges waiting for a drop of praise. Don't we treasure our medals, certificates, press write-ups carefully collected over a lifetime and proudly displayed?

I am surprised that so few managers realize the awesome motivational power of recognition/praise/appreciation and use it so little? Instead, we prefer to believe that pacifiers like salary hikes, bonuses, onsite assignments, because it is simpler and we don't have to do the hard work of getting to know our people and the good work they do.

Great managers and leaders know the power of genuine appreciation - phony managers indulge in Friday evening motivation - just to get their employees to come in and work over the week end. Great managers give unconditional and spontaneous appreciation with no other agenda!

Happy appreciating - "Catch your people doing something right" as Ken Blanchard beautifully reminds us!

Work Life Balance in a 24/7 world - my recent experience!

Recently, when I was overseas, about 5 of us attempted to spend time together and I had posed a difficult challenge by asking them to take time off during the week! That request by itself was preposterous but I had no choice since I was flying back home. My friends obliged and I shall remember the 2 days together for a long time to come and how the world is changing - not sure if it is for the better!
Today, taking a few days off really means that "i will be working from home"! It was quite a sight to see how all of us were juggling our laptops, cell phones and email boxes while snatching a few moments in between to be together!Each of us had our own "net meetings" to attend and being thrown together in a small space compounded the problem - with 2 kids for company. The kids of course have now come to believe that when Dad and Mom say they are working,they mean attend meetings!
I could not help eavesdrop on the different meetings that were going! One of us was saying " Yes Mike, we need to look at the roadmap and clearly strategize the way forward"...I couldnt figure out what that meant but it sounded terribly important and earth shaking! When one of the kids was protesting neglect, the mother was saying "Quiet! Daddy is on a call...as soon as he finishes he will take you all to the Park because Mom needs to get on to another meeting"!
In between all of this, we took turns taking a shower, having breakfast, managing the kids, etc Somewhere else in another part of the house I could hear "Dont worry, I have the demo under control...it'll happen"!
"We need to use the budget otherwise we wont get it next year"
I was left wondering whether the so called flexibility that organizations are now offering their employees is a boon or a curse?

I guess when we work in global organizations with matrixed teams and reporting, 24/7 working and availability becomes the norm and "following the sun" becomes the rule!

What is happening? And do we really think that 24/7 availibilty is 24/7 productivity or are we fooling ourselves?

Long Time, No See

Goodness Gracious I just woke up to the fact I have not updated this since you last visited... You would not believe how much more of a drama I could make that. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!.

I am absolutely consumed with work, personal projects, just generally being not online in order to society in general, my day seems to be packed from 8am to 11pm at which point I fall asleep on the couch. I am not complaining though. but never say never.

I won't promise anything to you but I will blog more regularly. Truly! Assuming I don't get distracted by counting my chest hairs..

Music and Management

Hi

I am on the Board of Trustees of an organization called Brhaddhvani - www.brhaddhvani.org and www.universeofsound.org. We are working on a number of music education projects but the one I want to talk about here is the work we plan to launch in the area of music education.

I have been involved in Corporate Training now for over 15 years and I realize that Coprorates can learn a lot from Arts in general and music in particular. Today there is an urgent need for fostering creativity and innovation in Indian Corporates and the global success and recognition that Indian Classical Music has achieved, will offer a number of lessons on what it takes to combine tradition with modernity and make it globally relevant.

Here are a few thoughts:

1. An interest in Music nurtures emotional intelligence

2. Emotional intelligence builds leadership

3. Leadership leads to unleashing human capital

Music is one of the nine multiple intelligences that builds EQ.

Specifically Brhaddhvani will offer:

1. Music appreciation programmes

2. Music education using its unique COMET methodology that accelerates music education

3. Voice culture

4. Instill a sense of pitch and rhythm into every person

5. Apply creative concepts to work situations

6. Harmonize work-life balance

7. Through the work force, influence parents to get their children started early on music appreciation and education

Each one of us is blessed with musical intelligence - the only question is finding and giving expression to it - our lives will be the better for it....the world will be a better place!

The challenge of leading GenY!

"The young mistake intelligence for experience and the old mistake experience for intelligence" is a quote I read somewhere and I was reminded of this when I was invited to be a judge for a "Best Practices" presentation at a leading BPO.

As I sat through presentation after presentation by 26-28 year olds I was truly amazed by the depth and strategic thinking capabilities of today's youngsters!Here was a bunch of vibrant youngsters redefining their businesses and telling their bosses what to do to increase productivity, increase revenues, cut costs, tackle attrition, improve employee morale, the whole 9 yards of the kind of consulting that the Mercers and the McKenzies of the world carry out for a hefty fee - and these youngsters were churning out brilliant ideas all on their own!

To me again I was reminded of one of the biggest lessons in leading GenY - how to get out of their way! As senior leaders, our job really is to ask all the right questions, set the direction, empower the youngsters, ask for their ideas and get out of their way! It takes a lot of courage and guts to accept the fact that the young today have better ideas and a lot more energy making it difficult for us to keep pace with them.

Although I went to "judge", I was humbled because I came away having learnt so much from these young minds. I came away with a lot of conviction about the future leadership of India - and only wished that I could see more organizations unleash the potential of the young like I saw in this organization. I salute the leadership of this organization!

Seat-potatoes!

My friend in the U.S. asked me to come out for a drive with him as he had to run a few errands - and at the end of the drive, I wasn't surprised at why the U.S. tops the obesity charts. Right through the trip, the only parts of his body that moved were his hands to steer the car and one foot on the pedal. (There's no work for the other foot because all cars there are automatic!) Oh yes! He signed a few charge slips!

Let me describe my ride. Our first stop was the pharmacy (not surprised) and he pulls into a drive-in pharmacy where the window opened up and the pharmacist took the prescription and credit card from my friend. In a jiffy, the package and the charge slip came out of the window and off we went to the next spot.

This time, it was to fill gas! We pull up and an enthusiastic gas attendant fills the tank, cleans the windows and swipes the card while both of us are sitting in the car!

It was time for some coffee and we pull up at a drive-in McDonalds - car window comes down, order placed, take away cups collected, little Toyota detailed slots in the car hold the coffee while we continue to drive!

Our next stop was the bank. I wasn't surprised at the drive-in ATM but what surprised me was the fact that this was a full service ATM where you could do any type of bank transaction while sitting in the car.

Our last stop was to pick up the kids from school. As he pulled up at the school, I was almost expecting to drive up to a chute where the kids would slide right into the car - but thankfully, NO! It was good to see, for the first time, my friend get off the car and use his limbs and physically pick up his children.

There is still some hope!