Gudipati

Rationale: There was a question popped up when I was interacting with some students in one of the training centres. “Why students show less interest and tend to drop out?” To answer to this question, I reflected on many reasons, apart from all other reasons like; improper counseling, not having interest in classroom sessions, expectations mismatch, incompetent trainers, distance issues and many other, but there is one more unsaid or ‘not much talked’ reason and it is ‘humiliation’. Many students ‘feel’ it but seldom express their experience, they feel rejected and tend to avoid the interaction with their trainer / teacher. The act of humiliation is not necessarily demonstrated by any individual with more conscious but at times it is an automatic act. As a trainer / teacher one needs to self – aware about their behavior and actions and how those are negatively influencing others, especially their students. By closely observing the reactions / responses of their students, t...

What key elements help a Manager to make his / her employees more productive? Everyone wants to meet timelines with qualitative output. However the individual operating plans which are set during their scheduled reviews drive the performances, at times it is difficult for Managers to help their direct reports to achieve their targets. Some of these thoughts may help you in making your direct reports more productive and be accountable for their deliverables. The idea of working with people is largely driven by 'communication'. This key aspect drives the teams towards their achieving goals in organizations. Since communication plays a very important role in this set up, Managers holding conversations with their teams also has a greater value in it. But the other side of this also has some negative impact, some conversations by Managers may lead to disempowerment in teams and that would directly impact their performance. However, Managers try to have better conversat...

October 10, 2015, Hyderabad. During my last visit to Bihar, I was visiting one of our rural project locations in Rajgir district, located around 70 KMs away from the capital city of Bihar. This time I have decided to visit one of the ancient and internationally acclaimed universities, Nalanda University. While I was approaching close to the university premise, I was just thinking and trying to visualise the kind of layout and infra of the university. I thought it would be something like some ancient building blocks and some ancient pictures of the great scholars, also was thinking about the history written on some blocks depicting the story of the university. To my surprise, I could find some stones, destroyed old building blocks and it appeared me that, nothing to feel so excited. Since I have come all the way, I just wanted to have a glance. There was a guide who came forward to share the story of the University. For a moment I felt that, what’s there to learn, instead ...

What is the greatest possible disability of a human being?, this question put me in a deep thought process when I was visiting one of our training centres which deals with students who are with some sort of disability(??) I asked this question to many of my associates and friends and there were different responses, some responses were not connecting and some gave a different perspective. I kept thinking about this question again and again, as the responses, thoughts and the deliberations from all good friends continued, there was some clarity that emerged and gave me an access to a profound answer for the question I was thinking about. The possible answer is ‘The greatest possible disability of a human being is not to consider others as capable ’. This is a kind of ‘being’ and often we are blind to this being which leads to disconnection with others. Let me share one of my experiences, some months ago during one of my visits to a training centre, I was asking the studen...

When I see others, I see myself; precisely their challenges, burdens, hopes and happy moments can become very clearer for me, in that state I get solution for my soul. How about practicing to have conversations with our closest ones over a cup of coffee, just to see myself in them? Also start asking about how they grew up in life, the kind of efforts they have taken to help their kids grow in life etc, I feel these kind of conversations put them in supreme state and they will start sharing many beautiful events of their life, they rejoice while sharing their experiences. This is one of the ways to be in gratitude about others...

Love, Gratitude, Kindness and so, all these are the core feelings of heart, not the mere words or expressions: When we say “I love you”, it shouldn’t be defined by us but be felt by the other; we cannot merely define the gratitude by saying, “I am thankful to….”, but be experienced by the other; So as the other beautiful acts like being kind, helpful, etc. should be completely experienced by others but not be defined by us.