IN
THIS ISSUE
Welcome
to the first issue of 2007 and hope January has been
good to you. The theme is of this newsletter is personal
mastery. Considering the theme, it felt very appropriate
to include an interview with Dr. Peter Senge who popularized
the theme of personal mastery through his groundbreaking
book The Fifth Discipline in 1990. In this interview
done as a part of Leadership and Many Ways of Knowing
project, he reflects on his own journey towards personal mastery. Despite knowing Peter for 20 years and listening
to him and working with him in various committees and
meetings, I found myself being connected freshly and
being touched deeply by Peter's authenticity and presence.
Let me know your reactions.
Personal
mastery requires deep awareness -- of what our internal
gaps are how they impact our ability to function effectively.
We discuss various levels of functionality and how they
are related to our capacity to think, feel, act and
be in the world. In another article, we discuss a unique
concept called "Core Incompetence" and how
that is connected with our signature strength. Finally,
we bring wisdom from Indian spirituality -- Vedanta
perspective on change and personal mastery.
While
the major gift giving season is behind us in the United
States, we are always giving and receiving gifts on
various occasions. How much attention do we pay to
wrap and unwrap our gifts? What could we add to communicate
our care and love in putting together and receiving
gifts? I learned from an old friend Harrison Owen that
it is not the gifts that make the most difference but
the engagement with the person who gives or receives.
We put together a slide show on exploring the spirit
of gift exchange and would love to hear your response
to it.
We
hope you enjoy this newsletter as much as we did in
putting it together. Please write to us with your comments
and suggestions. Thank you.
Interview
with Peter Senge,
Founding Chairperson - Society for Organizational Learning
As
part of our Leadership
and Many Ways of Knowing project, we interview accomplished
leaders in various domains. Here is an excerpt from
an interview with Peter Senge, author of the classic
Fifth Discipline. Read More >>
Levels
of Functionality
For
the past 20 years, I have been studying how people learn,
think, relate and create. While every person is unique,
I have found some common patterns that, if we paid enough
attention to and took actions, could dramatically improve
our growth in many areas. Read
More >>
Core
Incompetence: The flip side of your signature strength
As
an executive coach interested in exploring what drives
people to successes and failures, I have worked with
hundreds of ambitious people including business executives,
sports legends and Nobel laureates. One key discovery
I made repeatedly over the last fifteen years is that
there is a common driver to the successes and failures
of the people I studied. I call this driver, ‘the
signature strength’ and its downside, ‘Core
Incompetence’. Read
More >>
Continuous
Change, Discontinuous Life --
An article for the Hindu Sangh in Silicon Valley:
In
a fast moving, multi-cultural, multi-tasking environment,
change in the only constant and managing oneself and
others are everyday challenges. Every entrepreneur,
every employee and family member faces these challenges,
feels the pressure of time and effectiveness. Traditional
management approaches and psychological methodologies
only go so far and I have been searching for ways to
make a discontinuous leap into different ways of managing
myself. Read More >>
Wrapping and Unwrapping Gifts: Exploring the spirit of gift exchange
View the slide show >>
Excerpt
from an interview with Peter Senge,
Founding Chairperson - Society for Organizational Learning
Prasad: When did you come alive in your own life and get to know yourself better?
Peter: I had a chance to facilitate a Leadership & Mastery workshop through ‘Innovation Associates’. It was a really good time for me. I was probably just about 30 years old. I had done all this study and I had a great partnership that developed with Charlie Kiefer and Robert Fritz who were very different people. Charlie is an expert consultant (which I had never really considered myself to be) and Robert is such an interesting and unusual thinker about the creative process.
This ‘systems thinking’ approach was brewing in me. The first time we designed the program, we spent time together for four days. We began with all of us playing at the Charlie’s pool for an afternoon and identifying the outcomes. Charlie told me that I had to do some work during a certain period of time; we had a schedule but no content. The process was a metaphor and a practical context to do it again.
I vividly remember one particular exercise known as the ‘choice exercise’ that Robert introduced and we participated and that got etched in my mind. One of those choices – “being an observer”- just made me think and ponder for a while. It just crystallized in my mind as a choice from that time on. It became an interesting observer process. After so many years, I don’t really think about it, but I really observe myself when I talk. There is this Peter who is talking and one who is observing. It is kind of a binocular vision. You have to be in yourself talking, and also have that awareness of standing to the side of yourself. I think part of it is not being attached to your self. We all started to kind of disassociate ourselves from our mind strategies -- like if I do this, this will happen as opposed to just being present and saying whatever happens is fine. It is about really supporting our intentions and supporting people who are there.
I learned during that time that whenever I get really confused or sad or discouraged, I would just make the choice to be of service to other people and forget about everything else. So I kind of developed this trust that it was all coming back to paying attention to what was going on and be clear about my choice to be of service, and I think it takes care of itself.
Read
the full interview here.
Top
Core
Incompetence: The flip side of your signature strength
 Ten
minutes before the end of the extra time in the 2006
soccer world cup, the French captain Zidane almost broke
the Italian player Materazzi’s heart, quite literally,
with a head butt on his chest. This is not the first
time Zidane has misdirected his energy. He stamped on
Saudi Arabia captain Fuad Amin in 1998 world cup and
was dismissed from the game. In 2000, he head butted
Jochen Kientz in the 27th minute. Kientz suffered a
concussion and a fractured cheekbone and Zidane received
a five-match ban. Zinedine Zidane has always been known
for his intensity and the downside of this strength
became most evident in the world cup finals. It is probable
that France lost to Italy because they were without
their captain and one of the greatest players of the
game.
As an executive coach interested in exploring what drives
people to successes and failures, I have worked with
hundreds of ambitious people including business executives,
sports legends and Nobel laureates. One key discovery
I made repeatedly over the last fifteen years is that
there is a common driver to the successes and failures
of the people I studied. I call this driver, ‘the
signature strength’ and its downside, ‘Core
Incompetence’.
A signature strength forms in a person when a certain
competence matures in a person due to his nature and/or
nurture. I found that the initial successes produced
by the signature strength make people mistake a particular
manifestation of the strength for the strength itself.
They then convert that manifestation as a success formula
and apply it to all of their goals. When this behavior
continues indiscriminately, it spills into all roles
and situations resulting in Core Incompetence. In Zidane’s
case, perhaps ‘intensity’ is his signature
strength and one manifestation of it is an aggressive
behavior – when applied to the game, it helps
him to score brilliant goals; when blindly applied on
an opponent’s chest, it becomes his Core Incompetence.
So, Core Incompetence is “A blind attachment to
and reliance on a particular manifestation of ones signature
strength that has brought successes in the past but
now applied blindly everywhere else.”
Zidane is not alone in displaying Core Incompetence.
Steve Jobs’s signature strength is passion. One
manifestation of it is creation of products with simplicity,
elegance and perfection. It resulted in macs, powerbooks
and ipods that won the hearts Apple customers. It also
made him refuse to include a cooling fan in Mac II and
network capability in later Macs (he is reported to
have thrown a floppy disc at the person who suggested
adding network capability and said, “take it,
that is your network”). Apple’s low market
share and over-reliance on innovation to survive could
be attributed to a blind compulsion towards simplicity,
elegance and perfection.
For Craig Barrett, persistence is his signature strength
that turned into blind stubbornness when he stuck to
the Itanium chip against his own engineers. It cost
Intel billions of dollars and earned the name Itanic.
In the case of San Jose mayor, Ron Gonzales, Phil Yost,
an editor of San Jose Mercury News summarizes nicely
in a headline in June, 2006: Strengths trip up mayor.
Analysis: Self Assurance and forceful nature feed unwillingness
to take wide-ranging advice.
 Everybody has Core Incompetence. If you think you don’t
– slow down – and reflect on what your parents
or elementary school teachers repeatedly warned you
to be watchful about. See whether you still have the
same issue, the same ‘hubris’ or ‘Achilles
heel’ even now. When your confidence becomes over
confidence or sometimes arrogance, you do things that
you have done in the past and gotten away assuming that
the context has not changed. Everybody gets caught sooner
or later. It is just a matter of time: Core Incompetence
is a ticking behavioral bomb waiting to explode on your
face.
The presence of Core Incompetence is not the end of
your life. Once you become aware of it and pay attention
to it, you can manage your life around it and become
successful. One example I can think of is Lance Armstrong.
Growing up in a modest family, determination became
his great weapon to rise himself to heights he could
not afford. From local bike races leading up stage 18
of Tour de France in 1995, what propelled him were sheer
will power and unimaginable hard work (manifestation
of determination). Then he got cancer in 1996. Besides
teaching him many valuable lessons about the preciousness
of life and the nature of human suffering, he says it
also provided him the perspective to discover other
manifestations of his strength that he never used before
in biking: meticulously improving his strategy and technique.
Before cancer, he would never allow a competitor to
win one of the stages in the race at the cost of draining
himself even if it wouldn’t affect his lead. After
cancer, he allowed it. He even gave up on wanting to
participate and win every bike race and concentrated
single-mindedly on the Tour De France (another manifestation
of determination). By becoming aware of his Core Incompetence
and reinventing his strength in other forms Lance Armstrong
was able to win Tour de France seven consecutive years
from 1999 to 2005.
Finally, we cannot pay attention to our Core Incompetence
even if we become aware of it if we do not have a compelling
vision or a larger purpose. Because, without a compelling
aspiration, it becomes painful to look at our own Core
Incompetence. Only in the context of a larger commitment,
can our breakdowns be used to create breakthroughs.
Summarizing, Core Incompetence comes out of our signature
strength and not from already identified incompetencies.
Our biggest failures come from our biggest strengths
and our biggest lessons and learning potentially come
from our biggest failures. How to become aware of our
Core Incompetence and how to work around it will be
addressed in another article.
Top
Continuous
Change, Discontinuous Life --
An article for the Hindu Sangh in Silicon Valley:
 In
a fast moving, multi-cultural, multi-tasking environment,
change in the only constant and managing oneself and
others are everyday challenges. Every entrepreneur,
every employee and family member faces these challenges,
feels the pressure of time and effectiveness. Traditional
management approaches and psychological methodologies
only go so far and I have been searching for ways to
make a discontinuous leap into different ways of managing
myself.
Two
phrases from Upanishads and Gita that gave me some hope
are: ‘Amritasya Putrah’ and ‘Yogastha
Kuru Karmani’. We are ‘Amritasya Putrah’
meaning ‘children of immortality.’ A human
being is inherently divine. That divinity is the constant
that does not change. It is eternal and infinite. When
I remember and operate out of my divinity, magic happens.
My body, manas (mind) and buddhi (intellect) can change
but the underlying reality of it all – the soul
or the reflection of the Divine in me remains unchanged.
‘Yogastha Kuru Karmani’ is an advice that
lord Krishna gives to Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita. It means
to “carry out your actions being established in
Yoga.” It means to develop equanimity in everything
you do. Yoga is an attitude with which you can even
fight a war without getting caught up with the role
but doing it as a trustee. Over time, I distilled four
principles that help me realize myself as an immortal
soul and establish myself in the yoga attitude. These
are: Setting ground rules, Nurturing, Stretching and
Inspiring
Grounding or setting clear ground rules is a process
of freshly and firmly establishing oneself into the
current situation without bringing in assumptions and
past experiences. It is about being in the moment knowing
what the boundaries are. Once safety and security are
experienced in the current circumstance, our body begins
to relax and feel at home. Having a clear intention,
knowing the context and being aware of and staying in
relationship with others allow us to create appropriate
ground rules for successfully engaging with the changing
world. This is the most important principle because
it deals with body. For example, in Yoga, we talk about
Yamas and Niyamas as the foundation for living. Without
such grounding, relationships fall apart, creativity
does not take root and inspiration becomes fleeting.
 Nurturing
is a process of protecting, nourishing and encouraging
ourselves and our relationships with others. It happens
whenever we are able to relate to ourselves and others
with Maitri (loving kindness), Karuna (compassion),
Mudita (joy) and Upeksha (detachment). Nurturing fills
the heart with love and commitment and helps a person
sustain, grow oneself and ones relationships. Nurturing
happens in the heart, through the heart and on the foundation
of clear ground rules.
Stretching is a process of continuously being focused
on the bigger picture and moving towards it without
settling on past success. It happens when we are acutely
aware of our larger vision and yet are playful, lighthearted
about our own importance and success. This removes the
burden and anxiety from our goals and helps us stretch
beyond our fears and beliefs. Stretching allows the
mind to imagine new possibilities and helps a person
be entrepreneurial. While grounding quiets the body,
nurturing opens the heart, stretching develops our mind
and makes us more creative and innovative.
Inspiring
is a process of breathing life (the immortal spirit)
into ones body, heart and mind. It happens through appreciation.
Whenever we genuinely appreciate the many gifts of life,
we are inspired and in turn inspire others. When we
live our life as we want others to live their lives,
we are role modeling and that inspires others. Inspiration
occurs through silence, observation, appreciation and
shows up as energy and action.
 Grounding,
nurturing, stretching and inspiring are principles that
help a person establish oneself in the here and now
(yoga) and operate out of ones divine nature. These
four are interdependent cornerstones of human development.
Physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual development
requires grounding, nurturing, stretching and inspiring
elements to be integral part of our daily life. When
I consciously operate out of these four cornerstones,
I find myself grounded firmly in divine self, feel less
stress and more energy in dealing with complexities
of life and work.
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