Leadership – The Colored Mist

Generative Jobs for sustenance and wellbeing- Dismantling colonialism in the ‘Job Industry’

Few years back, I was doing a focussed group discussion on value alignment and a small part of this discussion was to understand what people’s jobs felt like. This was a metaphorical and imaging exercise to tap beyond language, unconscious and unsaid. Few patterns of thoughts that emerged caught my attention: there was always a wall, a chain, block, and many other ways in which people expressed their disempowerment through images. Some felt like they were driving a bus full of people and didn’t know where it was headed, some felt like everything looked ok on the surface but there one leg felt chained under the table. One person shared that every morning feels like they wake up and stare at a wall. This was not surprising, I guess we have all heard some of these expressions around coffee dispensers. Of course this was not a feeling all the time- there were also feelings of meaningful contribution, creativity etc., but there seemed to be something about the design of the mindset through which the jobs were designed that was holding the key to expanding the unmet potential needs of these people. I started to dream and realised that the mindset of ‘Human Resources for Organisation’ needed a paradigm shift to ‘Organisation resources for Humans’.

This framework of thought needs reflection as we have been conditioned with narratives of serving an organisation that then in-turn serves a bigger vision; however, the bigger vision is usually achieved by oppressing, marginalising and walking over several people who come to serve the organisation and when that organisation has no collective consciousness and understanding of sustainable ecosystems, it creates power structures that are oppressive. It creates pecking order, inauthentic insidious spaces which allow pockets of power, privilege and lack of responsibility in leadership.

This got me thinking, What makes a job energising? How can we create job descriptions as a generative container, where a person can feel growth? where people didn’t feel trapped, used or manipulated. How can spaces of generative conversations create emergence and magic.

Here is something I learnt from my work as an OD consultant for over a decade regarding what is important for people and what energises them. As per my observation, there are 3 energy components of a Job, I call them Triple anchor, The first two are creating the container for observance, awareness and alignment and the third is for emergence.

Being: Who and what is the person supposed to be in this job? What metaphors or images come to mind when you think of this job? What is empowering and energising about this job? How can that be expanded and brought to the centre of this role while designing the Job?
Personal Stand: What are the values that are crucial to this job and its mission? What personal values would support this role? Allow the role holder to create their own ‘stand’ for the job. Support Integration of the Role holder’s life story that bring the role holder to this place
- The stand would include a personal commitment, vision and a body posture for somatic integration that allows stepping into the being the Role.
- The Job description will have well being practices and creative ideas for stepping into the role.
Doing: The doing part is the part that emerges when we can hold the first two. This is the action that has to be emergent, dynamic, and come from a co-creational space. This should not be defined concretely, as that can become the biggest energy block. Also this must continue to evolve based on internal and external feedback.

The Triple anchor job design requires self work on the part of the organisation, where there is a deeper understanding of what is the collective purpose of the organisation and how is it informed by Self, Collective and Ecological consciousness. Some people ask me what about jobs that are only transactional in nature what do we do about them? I say they should cease to exist, if they don’t energise, keeping such jobs alive will suck energy of people. The next generation jobs shouldn’t be just informed by the bottom line, they should be informed by ‘What it means to Grow and create sustainable future?’

Anatomy of Power

Power is a malleable, invisible, infectious and multifaceted energy component that has a life cycle. Power generates a quantum field, which has the ability to grow or reduce ideas depending on the DNA (Dominant Narrative Association*). Power has the capacity to energise and de-energise at the same time. Human beings have a special connection with ‘Power’. Power can be both internal and external, it can be manifest and hidden. Power is one word can can mean several things at a time that can be both articulate and confusing. It is one word that can cause wars and deep human transformation. Power is evident and is felt like the heat of summer and the winter chill, you can sense its presence. If we name it, it may give power or take away from it, so there is always a negotiation happening with power. It keeps our heart beating, keeps us alive and it can also kill us. Every interaction with self or the other has power present. People can be born into power and thus may have unearned privilege and access to power. Sometimes people born in oppression and disempowerment can rise to have power. People who remain in power for too long can have power blindness that narrows their levels of empathy and perspective.

As a coach, leader, human, your insight into your relationship to Power is of extreme importance and has moral, ethical value to it.

Symbols of Power:

-Body type, Language, Race, Rank, Economic status, Type of car you drive, Clothes you wear, Brands you use, People you associate with, Spaces/Geographies you have easy access to etc.

Interaction with Power:

Humans and many animals since birth learn to associate and strategise their relationship to Power for survival. In initial years it means access to resources like food and security where the power is seen to lie with the parent. As the child grows the child is able to re-negotiate the terms and access to resources and comfort and may have shared power. However movement is always towards access to power. All this intuiting, sharing, understanding the dynamic of power is constantly learned and unlearned as the child grows into adulthood and happens through a process of ‘meaning making’. Symbols of power are introduced at an early age by social narratives and underpinnings of- what is felt, what is said, what is unsaid and what meaning is derived about the dynamic that co-exists. Usually the goal is for the child to have power as the child comes into adulthood. All behaviours and relating is learnt with respect to power.

Impact of ‘Power’ and its lasting relationship to ‘Self’:

Our relationship to external power dictates our relationship to our internal power that sources ‘Self’. Power has the capacity to both inspire and harm ‘Self’, E.g. You may get inspired by a leader and thus perceive them to have more power and in the process start seeking their validation that ends up disempowering you. The understanding of corrupt power, oppression and its manifestations helps us learn more about who we are as an oppressor and as an oppressed. It helps us learn about our agreements with Power. Also when we see power we could give away our power. E.g. Someone entering their CEO’s cabin with jelly knees.

Our agreements with Power are complex, fluid and depend on our experiences, personal symbols and continual meaning making:

-I want power, I will do anything to be in power, I will be compliant to power, I will rebel where I see power, I will negotiate with power, I will always associate with power and move towards it, I can see toxic power and I will rebel against it, I have enough ‘self’ power that helps me stand against any corrupt power, my ‘self’ power depends on the type of power present etc.

Remaining in observation of power, its interaction with self, its ability to influence, its ability to inspire and corrupt are all important for creating a systemic understanding of Power and thus helps us come from a space of awareness and sometimes a space of choice.

*Dominant Narrative Association: The association that we have with the dynamic dominant narratives running in the society, that can be seen in the collective unconscious as themes and symbols. E.g. When you see a picture of a wife serving a man on table, or an advertisement with many women wanting one man, there are gender biases being created in our mind about who has the power.

Are you a ‘Systems’ conscious coach?

Coaching is often seen as a healing profession, however it is important to look at the systems and context in which coaching happens. Coaches need a very clear understanding of social justice and have the competency to hold cross- cultural, cross-racial humility, have clear understanding of power, privilege, rank dynamic and every coach training school needs to integrate this understanding. Coach trainers and mentors need to be socially and politically aware individuals who understand the design of the systems that influence their clients. (Refer to White fragility and Caste)

I believe impactful and authentic coaching can happen only by unraveling and dismantling the way coaches are trained and mentored. In this article, I have used inputs from work at LTW, book pages 266-267 of Coaching for Transformation and inputs from my friend and social justice facilitator Natasha Aruliah.

Malcom X said “You can’t teach what you don’t know and you can’t lead where you won’t go.”

Coaching is an intimate conversation that does not occur in a vacuum. Each person brings with them, albeit sometimes unconsciously, their histories, experiences, identities, the context and systems in which they are living and meeting in. Attending to and understanding these systems, is a crucial part of the coaching relationship. Coaching attempts to unleash an individual’s full potential, however it is based on the premise that the coach is a blank slate, a neutral being and they can overcome all barriers if they care for their clients; that individuals in relationship transcend the systemic. Coaches benefit from words like ‘self-work’ without really understanding it in the realm of power and privilege. Very few coach training schools bring the awareness of social justice lens in the coach training.

This focus on the individual with little or no awareness and attention to the systemic not only can prevent clients from benefiting from coaching, it can actual cause harm. For some individuals, addressing the systems in which they live is fundamental to successful coaching that meets their needs and desires. Exploring the systems they are in allows them to explore their full selves, what is denied because of the system, the ways they have been assimilated in etc. Given this, it is essential that coach trainers have skills and competence to address the interaction between individuals and the systems that impact them. If a coach is unable to include a systemic awareness lens, they undermine the ability to build trust, conscious agreements and spaciousness in the relationship to bring the -isms that exist. Additionally, in order to support clients and address the systems, coaches must know their own identity and systemic realities. They must examine where they reside in the systems and the impact of systems on them as well as on the client. In doing this crucial and deeper work, coaching could create possibilities that can have impact on the systems in which the conversation is taking place as well as impact on the individual. However, because the coaching profession was developed from a monocultural, Western-North American lens, this work has not been done. As a result the coaching profession is currently not diverse, coach professionals do not reflect the racial, religious, ethnic and cultural diversity in the countries and societies they live in and clients do not reflect that diversity. Many would argue that coaching has therefore become an elitist activity for the few and is not representative of the current and potential diversity of coaches, or clients and world views within the local and global community. Some would even argue that it is part of the systems and helps to maintain the inequities.

Paul Kivel says, “Whenever one group of people accumulates more power than another group, the more powerful group creates an environment that places its members at the cultural centre and other groups at the margins. People in the more powerful group (the “in-group”) are accepted as the norm, so if you are in that group it can be very hard for you to see the benefits you receive.” People belonging to the ‘in group’ are unable to notice how they are the beneficiaries of a system that marginalises other voices and marginalised bodies. This is a global phenomena, applicable to coaches all around the world.

It is easy for people of dominant white culture or higher caste to move through their daily routines without acknowledging their entitlement, power and privilege and this supremacist culture plagues most of the world today.

Maya Angelou said, “We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.”

Like I said before, the coaching profession historically comes from a White dominant culture and is filled with ideas from that culture. It has also stolen/ appropriated from ideas from other cultures without acknowledgement.

Coaching is designed to support the people of White culture, provides little or no help and even causes harm to minority communities. With this in mind, The Coaching and Philanthropy Project was created with partnership between BTW Informing Change, Compass Point Nonprofit Services, Grantmakers for Effective Organisations, and Leadership That Works. This work was made possible by the generous funding and support of W.K.Kellogg Foundation, The Harnisch Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Evelyn and Walter Hass Jr. Fund.

Leadership That Works had conversations with the Coaches of Color Consortium (C3), a group of non-profit professionals with deep roots in communities of color who were trained to become coaches through the CAP project. The C3 members shared that:

1. Coaching models and frames are limited to the experiences and thoughts of mainstream society whose understandings and business model imperatives do not include the experiences of people from other backgrounds and heritages the world over.

2. C3 found that many coach trainers are not grounded in life experiences of people of color, thus do not have a positive frame of reference about them and their communities.

3. The coach trainers and coaches often come from deficit-based thinking and are not using culturally sensitive language.

C3 offered many recommendations to develop culturally, socially and politically aware professional coaches, I am sharing them below:

1. Coach trainers must attend cultural competency, anti-bias, White privilege trainings and this should be part of the certification requirement.

2. Unearth assumptions about how coaches’ backgrounds and experience influence how they see the world, and how those perspectives and paradigms further impact the kinds of questions they come up with (or what they become curious about).

3. Introduce information about internalised, interpersonal and structural oppression and how they relate to our clients.

4. Develop awareness of racism and its impacts today, and acknowledge it as a reality for the majority world.

5. Develop case studies from non-profit sector.

6. Sponsor think tanks, affinity groups and support structures for trainees who are in the non-profit sector.

7. Commit to offering programs and resources for free or at reduced cost to increase impact and reach to marginalized communities.

(reference: Coaching For Transformation Pg 266-267)

To add to this list; I think it is imperative for all coach training to include a deeper understanding for training coaches and assessments for mentoring. Here are few considerations.

-Was the coach able to pick up the voice of internalized supremacy and inquire about it?

-Is the coach able to discern and narratives that come from the client’s Social Group Identity?

-Is the coach competent to pick internalised oppression, and inquire around that?

-Is the coach socially and politically aware of the system in which the client exists?

-Is the coach aware of the issues and problems that are ‘usual’ and ’unusual’ in various social group identities? E.g. If the client is from sexually targeted community and belongs to a heteropatriarchal, supremacist system then- What are the systemic and emotional barriers that may present themselves to my client?

– The coach has to be aware at all times that the client can do only so much internal work around a system that they are not able to influence. E.g. A POC female client cannot be made to work on her communication style and have goals around it in a White supremacist, patriarchal culture by her coach to get into a higher position without an inquiry around the system and her feelings around it- how the system plays her and uses her every day?

– The Ethics committee should make clear rules around what is ethical coaching when it comes to giving false promises to people around ‘What coaching really can or cannot do?”.

o Coaching can empower the client to become curious about the system the client inhabits and interacts with.

o Coaches should make it clear in an agreement with the client as to what can be shifted in coaching and what cannot be shifted in coaching, with awareness of the system the client co-habits.

o Coaches need to have clear agreements with for profit and non-profit clients around cultural change initiatives that do not consider the marginalized voices of the most employees in the organisation.

o Coaches who don’t understand the cultural, racial, political and social identity of the client, must find mentors and training programs to build these competencies.

o Mentors and mentoring practices need to align with the guidelines that ICF develops for coach training with a social justice lens.

I just want to conclude this by saying that coaching should not be used without the understanding of systemic influences. In absence of this competence, coaching becomes an insidious tool of oppression for clients, especially those in marginalised communities.

Power toxicity

My body feels tired and sore, I am aware of a strong feeling of hopelessness about the world we co-exist in. The hierarchical, power thirsty systems that are ingrained in our DNA and drenched in our visceral realities sometimes look like endless black holes. I have a sickening body reaction when I notice the behaviours of dehumanising self or others. It is time we started to notice and understand the toxicity of Power differential. “I am right, you are wrong” “My beliefs are truths and you need to look at yourself” are classic scripts that run in our system that creates the rifts, dehumanises and closes all channels of communication. It creates power structures, where A is higher than B. Where B is supposed to strive to become A and is never satisfied with being B. A on the contrary has to continue to maintain its position. Both are chained into the system, and both are constantly involved in power struggle. This struggle shows up in our families, societies and between countries. Our world is constantly engaged in struggles of power all the time, causing domestic violence, social injustice and war. However I don’t think we need to go that far, even if we observe interactions between our fellow human beings, we will notice the power differential. Systems are designed for the more powerful to grow and gain, while the less powerful keep the struggle on until someone in power gives them a hand. Hence everyone runs behind power based on who has more information power, decision making power, Financial power, network power ( who knows who?) etc.

Definition of an Individual’s Power:

Individual Power can be defined as an individual’s ability and freedom to believe in his/her own resourcefulness and wholeness as a human being. To have freedom in creating an identity, which an individual wishes to create.

Factors impacting individual power:

One of the major factor is individual’s own belief and relationship with Power. This belief is nurtured by prior conditioning of where the individual is coming from and how has this individual being impacted by power. Other factors that influence are the spaces that the individual co-exists in and how these spaces either allow individual power or oppress it.

Power toxicity:

Power by itself is not toxic, it is quite energizing when we can stand in our power. But taking away someone’s power or giving away our power can lead to toxicity in relating with one another. For example; Gopal is Tim’s boss, in his organisation he is more powerful than Tim. He makes most decisions, including when can Tim go on a holiday. Tim on the other hand believes that this is the way the system works and that he has no power. So Tim continues to behave and take instructions from Gopal. Tim is frustrated as he senses oppression but sometimes may not be aware that this is oppression, he lives his life as a powerless cynic. Even though it may look like Gopal has a wonderful life, it is far from his experience. Gopal experiences more pressure to maintain his position of power. He can’t take risks and is constantly under anxiety, he feels hatred towards Tim and his inability to stand in his power and share the burden that Gopal carries on his shoulder. However it is interesting to note that both Tim and Gopal have become comfortable in their relationship with power and questioning it is useless activity for them. Thus this relationship continues to feed power toxicity drenched in hopelessness and can create internal violence, which is equivalent to oppression of a poorer nation by a more advanced one. The only difference is that one is oppressed internally and not visible, whereas the other is more in the face. We can easily dismiss smaller scales of visceral oppression present in the system and hide it under the umbrella of tolerance, often calling people who react to it as imbalanced or too sensitive for the system. We design psychometric tools to measure psychological deviations or reactions that oppressed people may have and then train them to fit into the system. I believe that more we hide power toxicity that is present in traces, the more it grows.

I have here tried to put down a few questions, which can help us become aware of power toxicity in and around us:

1. You exercise your authority to make sure that your employees speaks only when you feel it is necessary and in a manner that is appropriate

2. You make sure that everyone and all tasks are completed on time and targets achieved, even if it means that employees sacrifice their personal time

3. You leave no space for unnecessary personal excuses

4. There is no time for discussions and feedback for self

5. You always make sure that you are in power over the employee

6. You lose your temper when an employee can’t perform as per your expectations

7. You have Freedom of speech

8. You feel the freedom to be sad, joyous, angry, fearful and are able to name it.

9. Is there Freedom to be, without being constantly reprimanded or corrected?

10. Feedback in your system nurtures

11. Are you being subjected to depreciating comments by boss in humor or otherwise?

12. Are you aware of gas lighting, thus creating psychopathological confusion in you?

13. there a sense of smallness experienced by you?

Answering some of these questions helps us find where power toxicity exists.

Oppression that continues can create power toxicity that impacts mind and body and can have psychopathological ramifications in individuals. Over time it creates mutation in the system to heighten tolerance of oppression, thus impacting life choices of individuals. It saps individuals of their vitality as they start believing that system cannot be changed and there is a greater force holding the system. Whereas in reality the power differential system is held deep in our psyche. It’s code is held in the oppression that we impose on ourselves, thus feeding into an oppressive system. We are scared of naming the oppression to the oppressor as there is deep fear of being ostracised from the system. The system is designed to make us feel alone in the oppression, whereas the whole system experiences oppression without awareness. When we oppress parts of ourselves we also do not allow others to express those parts thus creating a pattern of oppression outside from inside. We oppress reactive and sensitive parts of ourselves, which yearn for voice and choice, but our current comfort zone keeps us in denial. So we keep increasing the levels of power toxicity within ourselves as we continue to remain and construct systems of oppression.

Detoxifying Power:

Power with awareness of equity of self and others, is pure power. This power comes from a deep space of respect for self and others irrespective of their caste, creed, race, gender, country, culture or religion. It comes from knowing that each human being is equal and everybody’s power is connected. However this is easier said than applied. If we practice to develop our sensitivity to Power toxicity and are able to accept it and name it, I think that is where the edge of systemic transformation exists. Ripples of power toxicity that begin from self have engulfed our world in toxic power dynamics that need observation, attention and transformation.

Coaching with Awareness

This article is for coaches as well as those who aspire to coach in future.

Coaching is a process of internal self discoveries that leads to natural transformation in people. In the process the person who is being coached is able to connect with a internal resourcefulness that nurtures and allows the person to see perspectives, which might have been unavailable previously. The person is then able to choose an action that is appropriate and self driven.

For being a transformational coach it is important to move away from problem solving and fixing to exploring and engaging self, Both the ‘Self’ of the Coach and the person being coached.

“When a coach is able to create a container where self can engage, transformation occurs.”

Many times in various organisational coaching, coaches are in a performance role, in such cases, engagement with self can be difficult. The Organisation may want the Coach to remove a problem with an individual or a group of individuals in a very pathological way. Transformational coaches need to develop skill to overcome the default of pathological prescription and engage with the group or individual’s deeper, transformational agenda effectively. Only when that happens will the real gold be hit and real transformation occur.

Coaches need to be aware that they are able to differentiate between their ‘Self’ that initiates transformation and the ‘Part’ that seeks acceptance and performance rating from the client. Sometimes it is possible that the ‘Part’ plays out, in such a case the person being coached also remains in the ‘Part’ of performance, without connecting with internal resourcefulness. The coaching assignment is delivered but post that the transformational agenda of the organisation remains unfulfilled. Organisations will always need to remember that for transformation to occur the ‘Self’ or the Core essence of the individual has to be engaged, for that Coach needs to be in his/her own ‘Self’ and engage from that space.

Aware Coaching is what gets long term transformation and self driven actions, in any coaching intervention.

I am open to taking any questions or comments for further discussion on this topic.

Thanks and regards,

Rashmi

“Time flies” myth busted!

In this blog we bust the myth of flying Time.

As we all know ‘Time’ is a precious resource, sold as a commodity in a capitalist world. How we spend our time on this planet defines who we are and what we are becoming. Time, prima facie seems like a simple concept to understand and we allow it to run our lives without deeper consciousness about it.

There are two basic belief systems around time, one that says it is finite and the other which says it is infinite. Where the belief of ‘time is finite’ exists, there are structures around time and a sense of hurry and a sense of lack of time. In some other cultures where there are beliefs about re-birth and ‘time is infinite’, the pace is slower and sense of time almost negligible.

Whatever your belief may be, becoming aware of it and how it impacts your pace, your goals, dreams and your life is important. What spaces do you want to spend your life in, so you feel more fulfilled, more satisfied. Feeling that time has been wasted creates much anger, blame and guilt. So to understand how and what impact we want to create in this life depends on, How and what we spend our time on.

There is a simple yet Dynamic tool, that can be used to divide, measure and utilize time, It is the time quadrant. This quadrant holds the essence of time and its relativity to our lives.

This quadrant says that time can be divided into four categories, and every quadrant has its own energy. Our being in every quadrant is different and a higher consciousness is needed to be in the centre of these quadrants and observe ourselves.

The quadrant of High Importance, High Urgency holds crisis and high pressure energy. These are crisis situations, related to health, death, relationships and breakdowns of all kinds. If we end up spending too much time in firefighting situations, we would be either freaking out or becoming numb to what is happening to us and around us. Health issues like abnormal blood pressure, vertigo, heartburns etc. could arise out of being in this space.
In Low Importance, Low Urgency quadrant, there are activities which are complete time eaters, like gossiping, watching television or spending time playing mindless video games. Too many such activities create a hole in the time bucket. This quadrant holds the energy of inertia, stiffness and heaviness. Too much time spend in this can cause us to detach socially, sometimes it can cause us to put on weight and associated physical and mental health issues.

Low Importance, High Urgency: Activities which are interruptions and need immediate attention. These could be activities which we need to pay attention to but could be someone else’s high priority. Such distractions when increase they start holding energy or frustration and hopelessness. There is anger and a need to create boundaries when the time increases in this quadrant. Any important Goal or objective can never be reached in this Quadrant.

High Importance, Low urgency: These activities are easy to put in the back burner, as they don’t require immediate attention. These could be creating a financial plan, writing down a will, finding time for positive and meaningful networking, getting trained on a new skill, writing your short term and long term goals, spending time with relations, which matter the most, exercising to maintain your body rhythm etc. Being in this quadrant creates much growth and feeling of self-worth. The last quadrant is the one that creates opportunities of growth for us, It gives us time for self awareness and introspection. Infact if you are reading this article you are spending time in this quadrant, become aware of its impact on your awareness and growth. If you are spending less time in this quadrant then your crisis situations would be more as you don’t have time for planning.

The key is to cut down time from any quadrant that is not serving you, and that usually is the Low Importance, Low urgency quadrant. Start putting time saved from this quadrant into the High importance low urgency space and you would see how dramatically the quadrants start working for helping you achieve what you wish for.

These quadrants are very dynamic and alive in nature, any quadrant that you feed would grow. If we had to sit down and list our activities and put them in the four quadrants, we would know what is eating up our time. Everyone in this world has twenty four hours and there is time for everything, we just have to know where we want to put our time and how? Creating time consciousness and giving due time to all the quadrants, with our choice and complete awareness can liberate us.

Can a Leader be Gullible?

In the past I used to sometimes think I am a very strange person…Sometimes I am calculative, Sometimes I am frivolous, Sometimes I am like a monk, Sometimes like a scared child, Sometimes like a warrior, sadist, funny, angry…the list goes on and on… these are all parts of myself, like healthy sub personalities. However it is only recently I realized that I am also Gullible…somebody said, Rashmi you are extremely Gullible…I have heard of that word and know that it is a word associated with being foolishly trusting and too optimistic about people. This is one feedback that I have received multiple times. I started wondering what does ‘Being Gullible’ mean in the Leadership context.

My search started off by checking the synonyms of Gullible…Innocent, Trusting, Accepting…it is also Naïve or Foolish. I did some introspection and realized yes I am all this. But somehow I wasn’t feeling bad, I sensed pride in that acceptance. Being Gullible allows me to try several things, take several risks. I am successful in many of them and I fail in many of them. Some people say, “It is suicidal…” I say “you can’t expect rebirthing without dying, and this is not dying it is just trying, everyone dies just once, so try before you die.”

The ideas in which I fail I have still learnt something new, about relationships, perspectives, and more about myself. I become aware of what I can deal with and what I can’t. Every failure creates a new breakdown a new energy just like every success does. I am a slow learner, I like it slow. I internalize my learning and integrate it into my new way of being. The learning’s that I don’t internalize I end up quickly making another mistake and then internalize them as well, slowly and steadily. Some big lessons have taken me more than a decade to internalize and integrate into my evolutionary journey.

This integration I realize has kept me at peace with myself on my journey and I have found it so valuable that I am ready again for being gullible. My real success at work as well as in my personal life has come from my being Naïve and open to Bizarre ideas. I also know that if I am successful it is called as an original and extremely innovative step and if it is a failure it is called a foolish step taken by a naïve woman. What matters to me at the end of the day is my resonance with self. At this age after integrating my ways of being, which I have encountered till date, ‘Being Gullible’ resonates deeply with me, It is the core of my being. That is who I am; I am not a head person. This doesn’t mean I am not intelligent; of course I am intelligent…I am brilliant…but most importantly I am Gullible… Being Gullible to me is not a part of me for me it is my ‘Self’. This helps me to be extremely optimistic about people, about situations and about me. Being Gullible means I am comfortable with my own vulnerability, this gives me courage to try different things without fear of failure. This also helps me establish deeper and more trust worthy relationships. I think for a leader being gullible is an important asset.

Are you Gullible?

Image Courtesy: http://whitecliffephoto.tumblr.com/page/2