5 Seats of Power
So, I've been meaning to tell you this. You are assertive and it's amazing! You know how to make your point heard and it's something I should learn from you. But I also wish you were a bit more patient when I am talking to you.
Noted! I agree I need to work on being more patient with you. Okay, this one's for you. You try to be helpful around people. Very helpful. Very accommodative. Although you have good intentions, you don't realize that you're helping people too early without fully understanding the context behind a situation. So it really helps no one.
How often do you feel comfortable confronting your colleagues like this?
What happens when you do?
Do you ever realize that you need to also improve on certain aspects of the way you work with people?
Or, do you tend to think you are always right in doing what you do?
Sometimes, we all tend to feel like we don't have permission to tell our colleagues what's not working well. I mean who takes pleasure in hearing unsolicited feedback anyway? If you have no appreciation for someone, no amount of trying on their part will have you take their feedback seriously.
But three Saturdays ago, Apoorva and Partha from Quinnergy changed all that for me and a room full of people.
Thanks to Suresh and Abhishek for the chance to take part in Five Seats of Power— an interesting workshop for Leadership Development.
I won't lie. I did not know what I was signing up for except that it is something to do with the Indian Mythology Mahabaratha, it is happening in a fancy hotel, and a lot of people I look up to were recommending it. I walked into the room with my usual skepticism and left feeling happy for being a bit wiser about myself.
Mandala Art, a part of the workshop for calming the mind
If you have a modicum of interest in governance and management, the chance is that you must be familiar with these names— Peter Drucker, Philip Kotler, Clayton Christensen, Seth Godin, Michael Porter.
Consider these characters from Mahabaratha: Yudhishthira, Bheema, Nakula, Sahadeva and Arjuna. What management lessons do they have to offer us? The idea seemed novel. The only other person I know who has tried to creatively interpret Indian Mythologies is the author and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik. But this was the first time I was in a program that stretched that imagination a bit.
We often turn to eminent people in the West to learn how they achieve personal mastery while being oblivious to India and Indian Mythology that is full of interesting heroes.
(I do it. More than 60% of the people I follow on Twitter are accomplished strangers from the West.) I am not going to argue how Indian Mythology does a disservice to women nor am I going to question the absence of a female character in the five seats of power. Maybe, all that is valid. But I got a good sense of my propensities through the workshop.
The program explores what motivates people to act in the way they do.
In doing what you're doing, what are you really doing?
I got super excited as soon as I learned that the founder and author, Raghu Ananthanarayanan, had mentors in J Krishnamurti, Yogacharya Krishnamacharya and Pulin K Garg. I now have no doubt that this is a great program to bring out the leader in you.
Today, as I am working from home, I find myself trying to convey lots of things over a one-dimensional medium. I don't know if my propensities are in check but I surely now know I have to work a lot harder to be the best version of myself throughout these uncertain times.