admin_shradhahrd, Author at Shradha HRD

Manager as a Coach: A Learning intervention for a Leading Multi-Business Chemicals Conglomerate on Helping Managers Put on a Coaching Hat

The Landscape: Our client has a large amount of age diversity in their workforce. A mix of Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z.

The management style of the legacy and tenured managers is very command and control. Gen Z is looking at a more participative, empathetic and engaged leadership style. They are eager to learn and want their managers to actively work with them on this journey.

The Solution: Through a simulation-based approach, managers identified specific issues their team members needed to be coached on. A structured coaching plan was prepared and implemented, first in the training room and then real-time at the workplace.

The themes that were covered:
1. Fundamentals of coaching
2. Prepare for a coaching conversation
3. Use the GROW model to coach
4. Drive productivity through coaching conversations

Program Impact: Participants were sensitized to the fundamental principles on using coaching as a tool, to drive productivity and engage with teams. They used this knowledge and awareness to initiate coaching conversations with members and drive growth.

Overcoming Unconscious Biases

The Landscape:
A global alcohol and beverage company had a clear vision to improve their gender ratio, especially in their sales teams. The first step was to make their teams aware of their biases and manage them, so decision making is objective. Building awareness on unconscious biases is critical not just to increase diversity in organizations, it has a compelling business case too. It directly impacts the bottom line of businesses and has significant implications for hiring, promotions, getting key assignments, building networks and general morale of the workforce.

The Solution:
An interactive discussion-based workshop, where the methodology was largely self-reflection and insight into personal biases was conducted. This was followed up by a structured personal action plan on managing the biases identified and moving towards more objective decision making in all spheres of work. The themes covered during the program were:

1. The business case for gender diversity
2. Origins of unconscious biases
3. Different kinds of biases and how they manifest
4. Techniques for building awareness of biases and managing them
5. Personal action plan

STRIVE: A First Time Manager Program

The Landscape:
The transition from an individual contributor to a First Time Manager is considered the most challenging one in an executive’s career. The endeavour is to empower managers to manage their individual KRA’s and to engage/manage/grow teams and drive results. Shradha HRD just completed a learning journey for 392 first time managers for a global IT/ITES company.

The Solution:
Through extensive consultations with stakeholders and participants, we identified the critical themes for the group. The program was contextualized and a robust mechanism to assess effectiveness incorporated This was a 7 part intervention, spread across 3 months.

The areas that were identified as challenging and we particularly focused on were:

1. Engaging with team members
2. Nurturing talent
3. Conducting performance appraisals
4. Giving feedback that leads to growth
5. Difficult conversation
6. Creating a psychologically safe environment
7. Coaching and mentoring

Our experience across different industries has thrown up similar data. First time managers struggle, not so much with achieving targets or completion of individual work assigned to them. Their main challenges stem from their inabilities to engage and communicate with team members, manage teams and influence stakeholders.

A Diversity and Inclusion initiative: Interviewing skills for the Talent Acquisition team of a Global Tech Company to help hire People with Disabilities

The Landscape: A global tech company has a unique diversity and inclusion program where they are hiring, training and integrating people with disabilities into the organization.

A need was felt to make the hiring process easier and more humane for people with disabilities.

The Solution:
Shradha HRD ran a series of programs for the talent acquisition team where we focused on the following themes:

1. How to make the process comfortable for the candidate, given the nature of disabilities
2. Managing our biases and focusing on the candidates’ ability, instead of their biases
3. Being a champion of candidates with disabilities within the organization

A touching story that a recruiter shared during the program, summarized #beinginclusive.

At a career fair, this recruiter was interviewing people with disabilities. He said he was very impressed with one of the candidates with Orthopedic disabilities. She was bright, cheerful and well spoken. The candidate however, was not a fit in the Tech industry, but was extremely passionate about baking. This came out in the half an hour long conversation the recruiter had with the candidate even though he knew he was not going to hire her.

He said, people with disabilities have been through so many rejections, that is important to listen to their stories. They really need that. The passion of this candidate stayed with the recruiter. He began reaching out with in his network, to find someone that was looking for talent in the baking space. Someone did emerge. And there was a happy fit-both for the organization and for the candidate. Being inclusive is going beyond the buzz words, its truly reaching out. The pleasure of having helped, the pleasure of giving, is special and a reward in itself.

IWN Mentorship Program

The Landscape:
CII, the largest industry body in India, has a women’s network with professionals from different domains, entrepreneurs, and home makers. The objective of the mentorship program was to leverage the experience within the member base and help younger women upskill, upgrade and have a support structure through a senior member in their line of work.

We worked with the Thought Leadership team at CII-IWN on the Second Mentorship Program for Women. This was a group of talented women, from extremely varied domains (entrepreneurs, professionals, homemakers starting ventures and leaders in their domain), who are committed to their growth and the growth of others.

The Solution:
This was a six-month long journey conducted, based on mutually agreed on goals by the mentor and the mentee. A clear structure for the journey was provided and overseen through regular check-ins with both mentors and mentees. The clearly defined structure and regular touch points with the experienced support team helps mentors that have the domain knowledge but not the expertise of running mentorship programs, conduct the program with ease and realize the set objectives and goals for the program.

This program is one of the best examples of women supporting women and creating an ecosystem for growth.

Program on Communicating with Impact for a Pharma Giant: In person sessions across India

Over the last 20 years, #communication is a theme we have run in so many different sizes, shapes, forms and for participants ranging from fresh entrants to the workplace to senior leaders. It’s a critical competency that is needed, across levels. The forms may change, from communicating with peers to coaching direct reports; the relevance remains unchanged

Shraddha HRD recently concluded a program series on #Communicating with Impact for a Pharma giant. Over the last 2 years, a bulk of our interventions has been conducted virtually. However, our personal experience has been, for topics that require reflection, learning by doing and group work, nothing beats an in-person event.

Post the program, some thoughts the participants shared, was the real-life relevance of the case studies, exercises and simulations that we conducted.

Our experience of having trained on the “communication” competency over 25 years helps us add value to participants across sectors and levels, by contextualizing the learning material and sharing best practices from a cross section of industries.

A Unique Immersive Experience on “Understanding Luxury” for a Global Liquor Manufacture

The Landscape: Luxury is an #experience. How do you give participants an experience of #luxury, sitting in a training room? It was an interesting challenge for us, as learning partners to a leading #AlchoholBeverage company. The end result was an #experientialprogram that provided participants a wholly #immersive experience of the luxury Universe.

The #keyasks for the program were
1. To get key account managers to sell an #experience and not a product. While selling luxury goods, you cant really sell on price, it’s the entire experience the consumer buys. This is often a challenging mind-set for sales people to move to.
2. Move to #meaningfulengagement with consumers; ultra high net-worth consumers. This can be done by reflection on the mind-set, preferences and buying behaviors of HNI consumers
3. A transformation from transactional selling to #consultativeselling: being trend setters instead of just followers.

It was a fabulous experience putting the program together & executing it. The faculty for the program were industry stalwarts & were able to curate two fabulous #immersive experiences on luxury, which went beyond, just classroom learning. This added the extra bit required to move learning to an #experience

When participants stay on, much beyond designated training hours, asking questions on how to perfect their art, you know you the learning experience has been #successful

Using Business Storytelling to present data is a program we have conducted for five organizations from different sectors-Finance, Technology, Insurance and Manufacturing

This is a pressing need that is emerging, given the increasing digitization at work and the large amount of data that is generated. How do you help others make sense of this data.

An effective and time-tested strategy we use for this program:
1. What is your key message?
2. How do you drive home this key message?
3. Build a concise and compelling narrative using elements of business storytelling
The most important ingredient is to strategize, build and practice practice practice

We spent weeks and months putting the data together but how many minutes do we spend on structuring the narrative.

Data informs, stories persuade!!!!!!

How business leaders THRIVE and not merely survive in the VUCA world

In the VUCA world, companies adapt to the changes, survive. But few leaders thrive in this environment. They pull everyone forward along with them. What lessons could we learn from those leaders? BE THE CUSTOMER

a) Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico, asked employees not to be representatives of customers but become customers themselves. She herself visited retail stores as a typical customer and experienced the business from a consumer’s mind. She encouraged everyone to do the same.

b) Amazon was so successful in selling books because Jeff Bezos was an avid reader. He himself is an extreme user. He knew the desires, needs of his targeted user segment.

c) iTunes store was an essential reason for iPod’s massive success. iTunes store solved a lot of problems and gave a wonderful experience to the music fans. One reason — Steve Jobs himself was a huge music fan -a hardcore Bob Dylan fan. Being an avid user, Steve knew what were the real needs of a music listener.

d) Harley Davidson promotes a culture where employees are encouraged to become riders so that they could understand the customers.

e) Nike’s founders Phil Knight and Billy Bowden were track athletes. They knew the problems faced by professional athletes with the shoes as they had experienced themselves.

How business leaders thrive and not merely survive in the VUCA world?

Source: Article by Shah Mohammed

6 Features of Hurry Sickness

If you are constantly racing to cross items off your to-do list, juggling several tasks at a time and easily agitated by small delays, you might be dealing with “hurry sickness”-a term coined by cardiologists Meyer Friedman & Ray Rosenman

6 Features of Hurry Sickness

1. You treat everything like a race

You find yourself treating even small, everyday tasks like shopping, eating or driving as a race; delays cause anxiety

2. You find it impossible to do just one task at a time

Focusing on just one task, feels unbearable to you. You’ll try to figure out what you can squeeze in while you brush your teeth

3. You get highly irritable with delays

Traffic, waiting at the doctor’s stresses you out. You’re the kind of person who presses the “close door” button in the elevator repeatedly

4. You feel perpetually behind schedule

There are never enough hours in a day to accomplish what you need to do. You always feel like you’re playing catch-up

5. You interrupt or talk over people

You may not intend to be rude, but you’ve been told you have a habit of cutting people off mid-conversation.

6. You’re obsessed with checking things off your to-do list

You love the burst of satisfaction you get when you complete a task and get to cross it off your list. But that high doesn’t last long, you quickly move to the next thing.

Working with Emotional Intelligence: a Program for 600 Managers in a Manufacturing Company

The Landscape: Vision 2025 for this leading Fibers manufacturer, included the critical competency of “Emotional Intelligence”. There was a need felt to move away from the “command and control” system to a more “collaborative” system. Behaving and Demonstrating Emotional Intelligence was regarded as critical, giving the constantly changing environment and the advent of the millennials and Generation Z, into the workforce

The Solution: Shraddha HRD designed a learning intervention, spread over 6 weeks. Participants went through a learning intervention covering the different aspects of emotional intelligence through virtual instructor led sessions. This was followed up with out of class reflection on demonstrating emotionally intelligent behaviors and implementing action plans.

Some themes that were covered:

What is the relevance of #emotionalintelligence in a manufacturing environment? Is it a competency that should really be top of the heap? Isn’t operational excellence far more important and if the command-and-control structure has worked well till now, why change?

There is a thought process that emotional intelligence is far more relevant for the services sector. A detailed learning needs analysis clearly showed that managers today, irrespective of the sectors they work in, need to display emotionally intelligent behavior, with their teams.

The Result: As this was an extended learning intervention, we heard powerful and heart-warming stories and anecdotes of participants applying the principles discussed during classroom learning, with their team members.

Truly gratifying

How learning helps companies beat Covid shocks

#Learning helped Mondelez India advance product entry of cakes into India, during the 2020 lockdown and pandemic, as well as shift an entire chocolate line from China to India without the machine manufacturers coming to the floor. #Unbelievable but #true.

Mondelez decided to launch its entry into cakes in 2020. The process was complicated due to covid restrictions. Well before the pandemic, Mondelez India had been experimenting and getting their personnel trained on running the production line remotely.

“We would have had no option but to shut the line for 3 weeks, had the shift engineer not run it from his laptop” says Mondelez International President (India) Deepak Iyer.

#Machinelearning and #ArtificialIntelligence helped Mondelez move the chocolate line, without any delays or glitches. Instructions were provided over cameras and mobile platforms on how to dismantle the line, package it, ship it, unpack it and assemble it. Deepak Iyer says all this is possible because Mondolez is focused on learning.

#Learning has clearly moved from a one time event to a life long affair. If we are to stay #relevant, individuals, teams and organizations need to learn and upgrade themselves continuously. The #VUCA world has necessitated this change. The pandemic and the increasing use of technology has hastened the process.

Program for a Leading Indian Bank on Analyzing Data and Presenting Insights

The Landscape: The target audience for this session was the entire Human Resource team of one of the largest banks in India. The problem statement was interesting. The Head of the team wanted his team members to develop the capability to look at large masses of data, analyze it, be able to draw meaningful insights from it and then present to the top management.

Currently masses of data was copy pasted onto presentations and downloaded. This form of presentation did not help top management draw insights and take necessary action, either to course correct or look at alternative solutions

The Solution: The Human Resources department had several sub processes within it, each generating their unique data. We structured a program that focused on the fundamental principles of data analysis and viewing data to draw out insights. The idea was to help empower participants to

1. Analyze data, keeping in mind, the utility to business
2. Create a structured wire frame with clear goals and an easily understandable format to present data insights
3. Build a compelling narrative to present your data

The Result : Participants were able to review their current presentation style, study industry best practices on presenting data with insights and implement using workplace situations. They now had a clear template on reviewing, analyzing and presenting data using elements of story telling. The feedback from their managers, post the program was that there was a marked change in participant’s ability to structure and present data meaningfully.

KEY TO INNOVATION – Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella, Says This 1 Trait Is More Important than #Talent or #Experience. It’s Something Anyone Can Learn. You would think the leader of a company like Microsoft would look for talent or creativity or experience. And, I’m sure he does. It’s just not the most important thing.

Nadella, used just one word to describe where he thinks innovation comes from: #Empathy.

Nadella says:

“To me, what I have sort of come to realize, what is the most innate in all of us is that ability to be able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and see the world the way they see it. That’s empathy. That’s at the heart of design thinking. When we say innovation is all about meeting unmet, unarticulated, needs of the marketplace, it’s ultimately the unmet and articulated needs of people, and organizations that are made up of people. And you need to have deep empathy.

So I would say the source of all innovation is what is the most humane quality that we all have, which is empathy”.

Businesses, as Nadella observes, “are made up of people.” Truly innovative companies are made up of people. Those people aren’t just focused on spreadsheets, product design, software code–they’re focused on people who use the products, software, or spreadsheets. They’re focused on empathy.

The one trait that Satya Nadella thinks is the Key to Innovation

A successful experiment to reduce GENDER BIAS

How an organization was able to substantially reduce their #genderbias in their hiring process through a simple cost-effective method.

Till the 1970’s, the top five orchestras in the U.S. had fewer than 5% women. By 1997 they were up to 25% and today some of them are well into the 30s.

How did this happen?

A simple change in the procedure…

Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them. In some orchestras, blind auditions are used just for the preliminary selection while others use it all the way to the end, until a hiring decision is made.

Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals.

It may not always be possible to have a completely gender blind interview. If we think out-of-the-box, towards this objective, we are likely to definitely make an impact!!!!

Daniel Kahneman’s decision making test

Given an option to choose between which of 2 events is likely to happen, how do you decide? How do you take decisions? How accurate is your decision making? Take a #test

#Option1: Delhi Airport is closed. Flights are cancelled.

#Option2: Delhi Airport is closed due to critical VIP movement. Flights are cancelled.
Is #Option1 more likely or #Option 2?

Most of us will choose option 2, even though it is more unlikely. The airport could be closed due to any number of reasons accident, strike, bomb threat, bad weather.
Why? The #conjunctionfallacy. When faced with details that are more #convincingly and vividly #potrayed, we believe them

Even #experts are not exempt from the Conjunction fallacy. In 1983, at an International

conference for future research, experts were divided into 2 groups

Group 1 was told “Oil consumption will decrease by 30%”

Group 2 was told “A dramatic rise in oil prices will lead to a 30% reduction in oil consumption”

Groups had to indicate how likely they felt the forecast was.

Group 2 felt much more strongly about the forecast than group 1

#DanielKahneman believes 2 types of thinking exist:

1.Intuitive, automatic and direct

2.Conscious, rational, slow logical

Intuitive thinking draws conclusions long before the conscious mind does

The Winners Curse

Why does #WarrenBuffet recommend you should say “no” to auctions? From Google Ad words to eBay, from auctions for telecom spectrum to submitting tenders as suppliers, #auctions are ubiquitous.

At a personal level, several studies show, we mostly end up #payingmore for goods, during an auction. Even companies are not immune to this phenomenon.

According to a #McKinsey study, mergers and acquisitions (the ultimate auction) destroy value in more than half the cases. The acquisition brings losses ultimately

The winner gets the goods but they have to #pay for it. Sometimes, much more than the true value

It’s the winner’s curse!!!

So why do we fall victim to the winner’s curse?

1.The real value of many things is uncertain. The larger the number of parties, the higher the probability of an over enthusiastic bid

2.We want to outdo competition

Take Warren Buffet’s advice on auctions. “Don’t go”. If you are in an industry, where auctions are the norm, set a maximum price on it and deduct 20% to offset the winner’s curse.

The MARSHMALLOW experiment at Stanford

40 Years of #StanfordResearch Found That People with This One Quality Are More Likely to #Succeed. In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel conducted the #MarshmallowExperiment.
Children (aged 4-9) were left in a room with 1 Marshmallow. The instructions given:

If you wait for 15 minutes, you will receive 2 Marshmallows. The researcher left the children alone in the room for 15 minutes.

Some children waited for 15 minutes to receive the 2 Marshmallows, some did not.

The #interesting part of the study came several years later The researchers conducted follow up studies for over 40 years and tracked each child’s #progress

The #results showed that the children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up with

1. Higher academic scores

2.Lower levels of substance abuse

3.Lesser marriages ending in divorce

4.Better responses to stress

5.More job stability and higher career trajectories

6.Generally better scores in a range of other life measures

Important question to ask:

1.Are we able to resist the first Marshmallow and reap the rewards of delayed gratification?

2.Do we have the patience to stay the course for the grand prize?

3.Are we resilient to the pressures of instant gratification that will often tempt us?

Everyone is beautiful at the top

What makes an ace sports player, an expert to give us advice on mutual funds? Or an actor, to tell us which food brand is best? We are so used to seeing #celebrities promote products, we never stop to consider why their #support should make the product better suited to us.

This is the #haloeffect. We subconsciously associate the “success” of people with the “success” of products, even though there may be no correlation.

Edward Lee Thorndike discovered the halo effect, a 100 years ago. His conclusion, a single quality viz beauty, social status, age produces a positive/negative effect that #outshines everything else and the overall effect is disproportionate.

Several studies have shown, we #automatically regard good looking people as more pleasant, honest and intelligent.

Physical characteristics logically, have nothing to do with #inner behaviors. Yet, our mind believes differently.

The halo effect obstructs our view of true #characteristics. We need to go beyond the surface. #Digdeeper and then form an opinion.

How to get others fired up and ready to get THE BARACK OBAMA WAY

I came across an old and brilliant clipping of #BarakObama. This is before he won the Democrat nomination to stand for President. Remember, here, he was a relatively unknown African American Senator from Illinois. This clipping demonstrates a brilliant #storytelling, building a #sharedvision and #passion that touches the audience.

It’s a great lesson for all of us as managers, leaders and influencers. The #principles are common. My take aways:

1.He paints a #detailedpicture of the scene. It’s like you have a ringside view of the scene

2.Extremely #specific. This allows you to feel the emotion he want you to see

3.Clear #calltoaction, without being pushy

For me, this is a must watch for all of us that use storytelling to build a common vision and shared understanding….get teams all #firedup and #readytogo

admin_shradhahrd