Perceptiveness Perceptiveness - the other attribute An interview with Dhruva Trivedy, Chief Interventionist and Promoter, PERCON T HE S TRATEGIC I NTERVENTIONISTS.

Perceptiveness- the other attribute

An interview with Dhruva Trivedy, Chief Interventionist and Promoter,

PERCON THE STRATEGIC INTERVENTIONISTS

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Who is Dhruva Trivedy?• A practising ‘Change Management’ Consultant for over

24 years• Rich experience of corporate interface for more than 40

years• Has cross cultural expertise of addressing change and

change-related issues• Is a passionate trainer on behavioural matters• Has been delivering lectures with practical allusions to

real life situations• Has had fundamental educational grooming in premier

institutions, such as St. Columba’s High School, New Delhi, Hindu College, University of Delhi and the Tata Institute Social Sciences, Mumbai

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Would you state a few things, as to how you have worked your way into becoming a successful

change management consultant? 1I do not know if I have been successful or not, but I can surely tell you how I have reached where I am. To cut the long story short, let me confess that I felt too tied down to a straight cut 9am to 6pm job, even though the challenges were many, the decision making was without keeping the future trends in mind. Globalisation was nowhere in sight. But I kept sensing the onslaught of competition with the Japanese major Suzuki making its entry and eventually ancillary units became my target audience, after I quit my last job. While dealing with them and setting up their HR systems, I discovered that quality training in basics of management and behavioural skills was required at all levels.

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Would you state a few things, as to how you have worked your way into becoming a successful

change management consultant? 2I was conducting training sessions once in a while and I realised I had a potential of being an effective trainer and here was an opportunity that I could cash on. I started being busy training at all levels, from Operatives to Vice Presidents. Soon I realised that it was only creating a hype with a lot of appreciation coming in. But the effects were not sustainable. That is when we found a more pragmatic approach of addressing transformation – a blend of TQM and OD and we decided to call it ‘Morphing’ a word coined by Dr. Deepak Chopra and borrowed from IT. The product or service was found to be ideal for the SME sector and we had a great experience of success in implementing the processes and approaches.

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What has inspired you to the concept of perceptiveness?

• The marked distinction between Transactional Leadership and Transformational Leadership

• Interactions with corporate leaders in a majority of cases, have revealed that they would rather confine themselves to a transactional role and not venture out to taking risks. They would relatively await that nudge to come by, when they would ‘make believe’ to shake up everything.

• We are not talking about them!

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What are the attributes a Transformational Leader essentially must possess?

• He has to be a visionary• He has to be proactive*• He has to possess a risk taking ability*• He has to be a great empathiser*• He has to be extremely perceptive

Although these are characteristics like many fundamental ones, such as communicating or motivational abilities etc., that ought to be found in Transactional Leaders also, we are mentioning these specifically, because they need an added reinforcement for this kind of leadership and are usually found to be intense.

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Why did you choose only perceptiveness and not the others?

• I think enough has been said about the others, while discussing leadership traits by different management ‘thinkers’ both in public forums and in classrooms

• Many organisations and many educational institutions have conducted intense surveys on ‘empathy’, for instance

• Very little has been said or researched about perceptiveness particularly in the organisational context

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Who inspired you to think about this concept?

I got drawn towards the in-depth understanding of this concept , when I first administered the Personal Effectiveness Scale designed by a behavioural scientist, the late Prof Udai Pareek. Later all contributions of Prof Pareek left me spellbound and I became his ardent follower

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Perceptiveness – defined by Prof. Udai Pareek

The ability to pick up verbal and non-verbal cues from others indicates perceptiveness………………………. ………………perceptiveness can be used appropriately or inappropriately. If a person is too conscious of others’ feelings, he may inhibit his interactions. Similarly, a person who is too conscious of his own limitations will tend not to take risks. Effective perceptiveness can be increased by checking others’ reactions to what is said. A person who does not do this (in other words, if he is not open) may become overly concerned about the cues he receives.

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 1Many years ago, when I was a child of five, my elder sister who had been an alumni of the Convent of Jesus & Mary School in New Delhi, took me to St. Columba’s School for admission. While she was talking to the then Principal of the school, Reverend Brother Ponies, I actually swayed away from where they were standing and got closer to the large window panes that were coloured and were translucent. The conversation didn’t interest me but the coloured panes did; at the same time I was not oblivious to the fact that serious conversation was on, between the two elders that was concerning my going to school. Obviously the conversation on admission did not inspire me because I was only 5 years old, but I did not undermine its importance - that was perceptiveness.

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 2The great story writers and the great poets are live examples of perceptive people. Recapitulate the works of famous classics of Jaishankar Prasad, Rabindranath Tagore, Ernest Hemingway, Anton Chekhov or even William Shakespeare. Don’t you find their minutest of observations narrated in the most exquisite style? In his short story ‘Puraskar’, Jaishankar Prasad talks about ‘Aardraa nakshatra’ or the wet star. When does one see wetness in stars? Just after the rains in the midst of the clouds!The following lines from Old Man and the Sea of Ernest Hemingway, “He hears the leaps and whirs of the flying fish, which he considers to be his friends, and thinks with sympathy of the small, frail birds that try to catch them.” This is an observation at sea. Witness the details he has gone into. What do you think the writers are reflecting? Nothing but perceptiveness!

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 3

There are two ways of answering your question:1. Discuss as to what were the essential ingredients that helped to build perceptiveness and 2. Discuss the process by which perceptiveness could be

built.Let me take them up one by one:The essential ingredients as I see them are:Sensitivity, Attention, Consciousness or Awareness. Each leads to the other.

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 4

The most understandable definition of sensitivity would be to describe it as that sense, which feels the presence of a stimulus and responds.Attention refers to the process by which we consciously select a subset of information from that stimulus and focus on it for enhanced processing and integrationOnce such information is processed and integrated, such information becomes part of the repository of awareness (consciousness, knowledge)

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How would you take a closer look at these ingredients? 1

The process in general:Daniel Goleman in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (1995) talks about self awareness that leads to better self management, which in turn shows the way to better social awareness and which eventually helps in building great interpersonal abilities. The question we need to ask is, as to how do we generate this self awareness? Our discussion on the ingredients would in fact guide us through. We have to be very sensitive in the first place and be able to filter what should catch our attention. This is a strong interplay of logical reasoning and emotional feelings and we have to judiciously practise what we wish to register. Results are visibly pronounced.

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How would you take a closer look at these ingredients? 2Had the opportunity to make a short trip to the Martin

Wickramasinghe Museum at Galle. Looking at the collection of artefacts and going through his ‘Aspects of Sinhalese Culture’ made a phenomenal revelation that all great persons significantly possessed the element of perceptiveness, without which they could have achieved nothing. Martin became self aware through his surroundings, the landscapes of the sea, lake studded with little islands, the flora and fauna, the forested hinterland, and the changing patterns of life and culture of the villagers. From the age of five he traversed the alphabets of Sinhala, Devanagri and English and finally even gave up schooling, only to become a great scholar, philosopher and inspirational writer, gathering a sense of pride for Sri Lankans.

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How would you take a closer look at these ingredients? 3Similarly in another part of the subcontinent was Kazi

Nazrul Islam, who on his own, grew out of fundamental Islamic education, working as a muezzin, into a popular writer with a secular understanding of the Bengali culture. Nazrul began learning Bengali and Sanskrit literature, as well as Hindu scriptures such as the Puranas. He was under tremendous pressure because of his father’s early demise to earn a living for himself and the entire family. But his passion was to become a litterateur and therefore, even though having worked as an actor in the village theatre troupe, as a cook in a bakery or having joined the British Army and elusively not taking the matriculation examination he survived to become a great literary personality and eventually the national poet of Bangladesh.

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What according to you is the connect?

Noticeably in both cases we see exposure to myriad of experiences, not pursuant of formal education, passion to collect facts and figures and eventually giving them expression through reasoning and emotional content.These two personalities as examples only go to confirm that the process of perceptiveness builds on •Sensitivity•Filtered attention •Conscious awareness of self and surroundingshelping them to manage their own selves and sustain their popularity (relationships)

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 1We go by two important sayings, “practice makes a man perfect” and “attempting to do multiple things at a time”The first practice:Doug Blackie, the leadership expert from Canada suggests that real leaders were consistent leaders…he goes on to say, “by and large, effective leaders are those who bring consistency to their vision, priorities and decisions” What we are referring to is consistency in attempting to practice. How does it feel if we do not brush our teeth in the morning or let’s say we have forgotten to brush? Miserable! Isn’t it? For those of us who do not rely on e-news but on a real newspaper, it’s the same feeling that we land ourselves in, that we have missed out something in the day! Why do we feel that way?

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 2The answer lies in the fact that since childhood we have been advised to do so and have developed them as habits. When we grow up, nobody tells us and we succumb to the situation for the want of a habit or the presence of it. We get caught unawares and get hit by a drunken driver, if we had not noticed him well ahead of time or we continue to restrict the growth of our organisation and let the organisation die its own death for want of diversification and growth, because we missed out on our competitors doing it, or may be someone else doing it in another unrelated vertical. Perhaps having to be watchful pays off. What is this watchfulness? Sensitivity + Attention + Awareness – again, being perceptive….not once….but by consistently and consciously practising them! Habit!! http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/18-tricks-to-make-new-habits-stick.html

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 3The second practice:How do I pay attention to an unrelated event or a situation, when I am focussed into an action at a point in time? Do I lose focus? Does my focus get divided or diluted? When your wife or your mother is cooking, because you were going to have guests and she has five dishes to serve. Does she lose focus or is it even diluted? What helps her do that with the kind of dexterity we get to see? And to add to that, if she has been a dedicated housewife, are tasks related to washing clothes, mopping the floors, dusting and dishwashing! Having seen my mother do all that, in retrospect, I realise that it was the order in every house and she was no exception, perhaps! Even today they performed this role with an unquestionable adroitness. How?

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 4How did the bread or the rice never get burnt? How did the stew or the curry never get too thick? How did the omelette not have eggs that were left behind raw? Alertness in different dimensions? Are they similar to jugglers? Alertness again = Sensitivity and Attention. But what about such alertness in different directions with the right kind of priority every time? Perceptiveness again!We get to see two new dimensions in this practice, besides what we have discussed in the first practice. •Acting simultaneously in different directions which requires multi-skilling•Prioritising initiatives with precision and accuracy which requires tremendous amount of self discipline

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 5Without going into details of consistency in conscious practice, let us talk about simultaneous multi-dimensional approaches. Just as cooking different dishes and preparing for it, the recipes have to be on your finger tips to deal with multiple situations if you were a leader and then practise ‘cooking’ them simultaneously. Sensitivity, attention and awareness would undoubtedly be utilised consistently. You have a customer coming in to inspect your infrastructure, you have a serious issue confronting the quality of your operations because of inconsistent power supply, because of the harvest season you have a shortage of skilled manpower and to top it all your dispatches that were to occur have got delayed because your outsourced logistics is facing a strike. Here jumps in the problem solver, the trans-

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 6actional leader, who does not have an extraordinary sense of perceptiveness. He would perhaps want to set things right before the arrival of the customer and raise his anxiety levels trying to fill in the gaps with short term solutions, so that apparently everything appears to be right. A perceptive transformational leader would on the other hand anticipate the strike and make alternative arrangements for shipment of goods, also create a pool of skilled workers to be outsourced during the harvest season, which he knew came every year, try and arrange a captive power generation unit and also try to buy some time from the customer if that was possible, so that everything appears normal even if there was a sudden announcement of his arrival. This would actually mean acting in different directions and prioritising every activity.

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In order to conclude what advice would you leave for the younger entrepreneurs and managers?

I have two things to say:1. Acquire self discipline, by scheduling activities and setting alarms for reminding , so that the activities can be taken up on time. A conscientious person would not need all this, but what is significant is that practising has to become a habit. Practising to develop alertness and multi-dimensional approaches.2. Keep yourself and your five senses awake all the time. If need be one could seek the assistance of meditation. This would also help developing a passion for knowing.It was wonderful giving an expression to my thoughts. Thanks!

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