I officially joined APTS at this meeting. The meeting was fun, and the two speakers spoke about stuff which resonated a lot with me!

Dr Kala spoke about Personal Mastery, which really was all about making choices to develop yourself and make yourself happy, in simplistic terms. Deja vu, I had just written a post that very afternoon about “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat“, in which I emphasized that we are what we choose. I felt a close kinship with Dr Kala when she spoke about a period of her life when she was in charge of co-ordinating workshops and courses for people development in a certain large organization. At that time, people were generally not keen in upgrading themselves, and being sent for workshops or courses was seen as a great inconvenience, to put it mildly. People would typically grumble about going for a three-day workshop and having to catch up on backlog for three weeks after that. So, attendance at sponsored workshops and courses was abysmal. So abysmal, in fact, that when THAT time of the Financial Year approached, the amount of allocated funds left unspent was rather large. Dr Kala described how her boss had instructed her to simply “Request for quotes from any training organizations or consultants and give the projects to the highest bidder”. When she objected, her boss said that it had to be done or else the funding for the next Financial Year would be drastically reduced. Dr Kala protested that it was not the right things to do, and, of course, she was right. However, her boss then said words to the effect of “My way or the Highway”, and Dr Kala chose the Highway. I am glad she did, and I respect her highly for doing so!

The second speaker, Zeeshan, described how we can motivate employees for higher performance. One of the things he said brought back another earlier post I had written, on “Have you managed to make your CEO redundant?” Leaders in many parts of the world are so reluctant to delegate work to, or empower, if delegate is a dirty word for you, their staff. The one thing that would make you stand out as a great leader is when you consistently demonstrate that you place the interests of others above your own. Proper delegation is one of those things. And delegation does NOT simply mean “Arrowing”, as my countrymen would put it. Perhaps I will write a little about “Deliberate Delegation” down the road.

In my next post, I will talk about “Meta-motivation” and how having a purpose higher than yourself will bring you genuine fulfillment in your business.