Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis shared yesterday in HBR about how to be an agile learner. 

What is learning agility?

Learning agility is the skill of learning from experiences so you can succeed in new situations. For example, a leader with learning agility can successfully transfer their talents across different parts of an organization. And individuals with high learning agility become the trusted “go-tos” for high-profile projects and high-impact positions. An agile learner can successfully navigate two different types of newness: complex work with no blueprint and situations where they have no previous experience. Where some people struggle with the high levels of ambiguity that newness creates, agile learners take advantage of the opportunity and succeed in situations where other people might stall.

Agile learners are adept at empathizing with and even anticipating different perspectives. By putting themselves in other people’s shoes, they can connect dots, spot and resolve potential conflicts, and zoom out to see the bigger picture. Rather than waiting to be told a different point of view or that something won’t work, agile learners seek out dissenting opinions and are open-minded in their approach. 

Agile learners have high levels of self-awareness. They understand their impact and seek insight on how they can improve. They are specific about the support they need and confident enough to ask for help from others so they can be at their best. They see learning as a constant and are proactively curious about the world around them, borrowing brilliance from different people and places.

Questions to ask ourselves about our learning agility:

• How often do I work on something for the first time?
• When have I spent time in my courage zone (i.e., doing something I find “scary”) over the past three months?
• How do I respond when priorities and plans change without warning?
• Who do I have conversations with to learn about people and teams I have limited knowledge of?
• How confident am I in high-challenge conversations, where people have different points of view?
• How much cognitive diversity (i.e., people who bring a variety of different experiences, perspectives) do I have in my career community?
• How do I feel about asking for the help I need to succeed?
• Where do my strengths have the most impact in the work that I do?
• How frequently do I ask for feedback on what I do well, and how I could improve my impact?

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I just read an amazing HBR article by Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa.

Great leadership requires mastering key skills like communication, feedback, and motivation. But it's not just about the big gestures; small, consistent actions fueled by authenticity and positive energy are what truly propel you forward.

• 3 key themes for "Energy/Action" leadership:
  • Intention: Bring out the best in yourself and others for a common good.
  • Energies: Activate purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and self-realization.
  • Actions: Simple steps to express these energies (e.g., disarm, appreciate, fuse opposites).
• Benefits of "Energy/Action" training:
  • Attainable: Easier to learn and practice than complex behaviors.
  • Authentic: Aligned with your true feelings and thoughts.
  • Agile: Adaptable to different situations and people.
• Conclusion: Focus on small, genuine actions guided by positive intentions and energies to develop your leadership potential.

Remember, it's the small, authentic, and consistent actions that make great leaders, not just grand gestures.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

As we are going through the lockdown, one of the things that is keeping the sanity during this crazy time is listening to QFR series done by the great Subhasree Thanikachalam and her wonderful team.  While we as listeners have had the privilege of enjoying the fruits of the  finished product , I  found it overwhelming to wrap my brain around the inordinate amount of time Subhasree must have devoted and continue to do so in presenting the un-heard or forgotten songs from the bygone era which have been washed away by the tides of time. I have been intrigued by the process by which Subhasree go about it, right from song selection, trivia, appropriate singers for the song selected , coordinating the accompanying instrumental music by various musicians , editing etc & that too all done remotely. Subhasree has given a new lease and life to some of the un-heard songs by unearthing them from the deep past & elevating them to a status that even the original people composers, lyricists & singers would not have envisioned . To a large extent she has single handedly helped all the music lovers cope with the lockdown through your phenomenal unimaginable work. May God bestow  Subhasree and her amazing team  lot of energy to continue to produce outstanding work.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

The more experiences I have, the more I realize I don't know. The more I realize there's more out there, the more curiosity I have, the more I learn. What I try to do is I do a lot of things that are outside my comfort zone. I say yes to things that will allow me to have a different experience. That's very difficult because you also want to make sure that you're focused, so you have to be very intentional about those experiences. I don't mean intentional that it has to make sense, I mean intentional about that interests me. Curiosity is critical for the process of learning and development. Evidence suggests that learning with curiosity leads us to remember more of what we learn and moreover, to enjoy the learning process more.

What do we mean by curiosity? Philosopher and psychologist William James defined curiosity as the impulse towards better cognition, or in other words, a desire to learn and know more. Contemporary definitions of psychology consider curiosity an internal motivation to seek information. These are semantically different, but the meaning is the same. It's an individual desire, an internal desire to want to go out and find something new. Some might argue that curiosity is a fixed and innate trait. Either have it or you don't. We can all probably think of people that immediately come to mind as curious people and others that don't seem so curious. But what if that is more of a state of being than an intrinsic trait? What if we thought about curiosity as a competency or a skill to be developed? To be fair, most of us have gone through an education system that values the acquisition of knowledge and there's nothing wrong with that, of course. But often curiosity goes against the norm and therefore it's hindered instead of cultivated.

When you were younger, especially in early elementary school, did you ever experience that kid in your class who all of a sudden, out of nowhere asked a question that seemed completely unrelated to whatever was going on in the class at the moment? Chances are that student was told to pipe down or wait until later. Or have you ever been in a meeting where you are close to consensus on some decision with your team and then someone pipes up with a question that no one had yet thought to ask, and then that person gets shut down? These are examples of curiosity at work.

Throughout our lives, most of us get graded and evaluated on what we know, how much we studied, how much we remembered, how we will be able to work through a problem to get to the right answer. Because of this, we grow into knowers. We believe we have the answers and we stopped checking our own assumptions. This makes us feel confident and in control. It helps us to demonstrate to others our values so we can get that promotion or take on that new project. But it also completely gets in the way of our ability to be curious, our ability to learn. Cultivating our curiosity is about shifting from being a knower to a learner. This doesn't mean we don't have any knowledge, it means we are open to constantly updating our assumptions by taking in new information. It makes it more likely that we'll engage in a dialogue in which all voices in a team contribute instead of a debate that turns into an uncomfortable conversation. It means that when we face disappointment, we will explore that experience for what we can take away from it instead of letting it shut us down.

Question is, how do you get into a learner mindset or how do you know you're not in a newer mindset? I think you have to almost catch yourself or if somebody else can catch you with it and say, well, that's a solution that you're thinking about and it's not a problem. So that might be one way to do it is you might just say to yourself, am I thinking in terms of a solution without a problem defined? Or my thinking about a problem and my asking all the right questions to try to find out all the different aspects of this interdependent problem situation that is going on. I think that might be the simplest way of asking yourself, am I a knower or am I a learner? A knower would be like Richard Feynman and his dad versus his friend. Feynman was a theoretical physicist, brilliant guy.

The story goes that they would go out into the forest and see birds and trees and his friend and his father would say to him, that's a cardinal or that's a birch tree or he would explain to him what he was seeing, and of course, his friend would memorize that, he would be a knower of all of those things. Richard's father would say to him, "So why do you think the beacon that bird has that shape?"

I mean, it's a completely different thing. So it opens up a set of questions. I think to that example, I would say that maybe the way you become a learner always start with a set of questions that you don't understand the answer to, and then you ask how can I get answers to my questions? That puts you into a learner mode. Curiosity is powerful.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Let's talk a bit about courage and its relevance for leadership growth. Dr Brené Brown, whose work on vulnerability has become widely known, defines vulnerability as uncertainty risk and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is when we are at our most human and it is not a sign of weakness rather our willingness to get into that state of discomfort and emotional exposure is exactly a measure of how brave we are willing to be. Based on her research she argues that vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage and it is a prerequisite to the behaviors that her research has found are important for what she calls daring leadership, which are rumbling with vulnerability, braving trust, living our values and learning to rise.

Being a leader takes courage, takes courage to let go of the assumption that we as leaders have it all figured out. It takes courage to let an employee or team member take ownership over a project. It takes courage to have a difficult conversation with members of our team. It takes courage to look at ourselves and be willing to say, I'm going to try to grow as a leader even if it's hard. Again it's kind of a sobering responsibility and is it that you're being watched all the time? And the answer is unfortunately yeah, a lot of times we have unrealistic expectations of our leaders. I remember being junior in Allergan and being in a meeting and sitting with the director and I was like, they must know everything. When I was a Director I was like, yeah, I don't really know anything, coz sometimes you don't know anything about the topic and you have to have the humility to ask the questions. But people often will have unrealistic expectations and part of what you can do and part of that is being very human and being willing to be vulnerable sometimes. And that's part of the challenge with that authentic style of leadership and leading because there's some vulnerability but there are ways to protect yourself as well, right? But at the end of the day you were much more fulfilled and you feel much better. And when you put your head down on the pillow at night, you can rest better knowing that you are authentic self and you are bringing your best to your team or whatever situation you're working in as a leader.

As leaders, we are in a prime position to have to deal with uncertainty risk and emotional exposure, meaning we have to get messy with vulnerability. Just think about it, relationships with people who are looking to you to make decisions, to be a role model, to empower them, to do great work and to grow themselves as leaders. Just to name a few of the responsibilities of leaders that require us to be vulnerable, because of all of this, it can be easy to build up a sort of emotional armor. So what does this armor look like?

Defaulting to making a decision without listening to others, avoiding hard conversations, being a no or instead of a learner, blaming others instead of considering our own role in the situation. Being courageous is about getting vulnerable and learning to lower that armor. So how do we practice lowering the armor? How do we develop that sense of courage requires practicing vulnerability? Play with vulnerability, Brené Brown calls this rumbling with vulnerability and I like that to test out what it feels like to acknowledge your vulnerability instead of hiding from it.

Start by acknowledging those places of risk, uncertainty and emotion with people you trust employees, team members supervise or maybe even family members. I have to get vulnerable to be a good leader, get curious, ask yourself? I wonder where vulnerability appears for me, look for opportunities to shift from blame to internalization. Good problem solvers look for the source of a problem and in teams and organizations that often turns into finding someone to blame. This is a great place to practice being vulnerable. It's easy to blame others, it's harder to acknowledge our own role in a problem or sometimes even to forgive when someone has done something wrong. If you find yourself leaning toward blaming someone, turn inward, acknowledge any resistance you are feeling and see if you can figure out why, then consider other elements of the system around you that may be playing in a role in this problem.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I was in the bay area last weekend sharing the opportunity, spinning the dream; met copious amount of people. Both dreamers and pretend-dreamers.

Lot of them were upset about what is happening in the economy, frustrated about the uncertainties in the job. But how many of them dare to do something different? You might think that the uncertainties in the economy would have given some truth lessons to try an alternative route, have a backup plan. I love the quote "Dig the well before you are thirsty". So true, isn't it? We sometimes live in a microwave society where we need stuff instantly. 2-minute noodles.

If somebody has enough noodles up there, they would know hard work precedes success.

Success is always a process. My mom made a south Indian dish and it tasted so good. She has mastered the art of making it. I was asking her "How do you do this? When I put all the ingredients together, I do not see the same result and it doesn't taste the same. How come? She replied calmly with lot of conviction, "It is a process. I had messed up enough and have tried it enough to know how to make this. I am still striving to make this better." I have noticed lot of people look at the end product and look for the miracle pill combination. I have noticed the same trend after you reach some success milestone when the business owners surround the speaker and ask, "how many presentations did you do to get the success you have attained"? People love to hear the magic numbers so that they can incorporate that in their plan of action. What I learned listening to my mentors  is you do enough to make it happen.

Sowing always comes before reaping. There is a lagtime between sowing and reaping. You always sow more than you reap. How can I apply this principle everyday?

The very thing you most want to see more of in your life is the very thing you need to give away.

Want more credit for all you do and who you are? Be the one who gives credit to others. Spread it like California wildfire.  Give away what you most want. This will create a space in the minds and hearts of all those around you to give more credit.

Want more understanding from other people? Be more understanding and give that out to other people.

Want more loyalty from other people? Be the most loyal person you know. Watch what happens.

Want more love? Give more love.

I strongly believe life wants you to win. Most people just get in their own way and sabotage their success. They let their fears keep them from greatness. They let their limitations become their chains. They become their own worst enemies. To get all that life wants for you,give out what you most want to see come back. It's great life that is in store for you. Just go out and get it.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

There are  no extra special people on the planet. We all have gifts, resources and capacities that make us special. And with gifts come responsibilities. To use them. To refine them. To make them brighter so we create more value. To forget the burden on you to be great is to neglect the call on your life. And no failure could be bigger than that.

Everybody is worried about the bankruptcies that are happening all over the place in corporate America. But the biggest bankruptcy of all is to lose your dream."

 When you are exposed to a new idea in a book that you read, whether you really get that idea consciously or not, you are not the same person you were before you picked up that book. At some level, you have changed. You see the world a little differently. You have grown. He emphasized all aspiring enterpreneurs to read for a change. Stay hungry for learning and putting what you learn in action. 

-Karthik Gurumurthy

• Don't  get down when your life takes a bad turn. Out of adversity comes challenge and often success.
• Don't blame others for your setbacks
• When things go well, always give credit to others.
• Don't talk all the time. Listen to people who have been there and done that and keep an open mind to learn from them.
• Don't brag about yourself. Do your work and let others point out your virtues, your strong points.
• Give someone else a hand. When a friend is hurting, show that friend you care.
• There's power in Prayer.
• Success comes in the "cans", not "cannots".
• Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. The smarter the people, the more you can accomplish. 
• Integrity matters around the clock. The same goes for humility.
• Do the right thing. There are values that everyone knows but many disregard when it comes to business. Behave ethically. Work hard. Respect others. If you embrace this approach, it will make your reputation.
• Always over-deliver. Never do just what the boss asks, always do more.
• We can only make ourselves indispensable through service and achievement.
• Worrying is like a rocking chair, it keeps you busy but it brings you nowhere. 
• Your reputation and integrity are everything. Follow through on what you say you're going to do. Your credibility can only be built over time, and it is built from the history of your words and actions.
• Respond to people in a timely manner; this shows respect and responsibility.
• Take on additional responsibility whenever and whereever possible.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

It takes great courage to be honest. One of the noblest qualities in a person is the' ability to say, "I am sorry, I was wrong, you were right”. It doesn't really matter about being right winning arguments or having my ideas accepted. It matters more that I am able to recognize my mistakes, take responsibility for them, learn the lesson and move on with greater maturity.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Business  needs leaders for whom integrity is built in or second nature, if you will. Integrity is not a product or the result of a course on the way to earning an MBA. It is not a veneer or a public stance. To the contrary, it should be bred in the bone and be as important in one's life as one's public life; always on and functioning 24/7.

Leaders with such a deep-rooted sense of integrity could, I believe, profoundly and rather quickly help restore a great deal of the public's confidence in business. Good leaders would also choose to work with others who have the same sense of integrity or do everything they can to instill the same belief in the irrevocable importance of integrity.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

"Small deeds completed are better than large deeds planned."

-Karthik Gurumurthy

"The great thinkers begin by knowing what others think. Wisdom comes after information and knowledge.  And books provide the scaffolding that allows us to build your own system of thought."

-Karthik Gurumurthy

"You've got to have integrity, and that comes from being true to yourself. You have to act exactly the way you are. You can't be one person at home and another person at work. You can't act one way with your team and a different team with the family. Integrity is when your insides match your outside, when your heart and your feelings match your actions."

-Karthik Gurumurthy

If you look at what you have in life, you will always have more.  If you look at what you don't have in life, you will never have enough. When we choose to appreciate the blessings and treasures already present in our lives, a positive cycle of abundance is set in motion. Gratitude becomes a powerful force, attracting more reasons for thankfulness. Conversely, a focus on what is lacking perpetuates a perception of scarcity, hindering our ability to recognise the abundance that may exist. It's a profound shift in perspective, illustrating that our outlook shapes the richness of our experiences. Gratitude, as suggested by this statement, becomes not just a virtue but a catalyst for a more fulfilling and abundant life. 

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Empathy is the secret sauce of great leaders. It's not about having all the answers, it's about truly understanding the people you lead. When you listen, connect, and support, you build a team that's unstoppable! One example of being a leader is that people can feel that they can come to you for advice without that conversation going any further, or costing them anything professionally with the company. Leadership is helping those little flowers grow and smiling seeing what they do with that advice and letting them find their own way with that little nudge from you.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

What is self awareness to me? The ability to see ourselves clearly, to understand who we are, how others see us and how we fit into the world or perhaps the shortest definition, knowing ourselves inside and out.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Developing our capacity to lead is part of our lives as human beings, our physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual selves that change over time, and we each take a different developmental trajectory. That's why there's no such thing as one secret formula or a one-size-fits-all recipe for achieving leadership. Instead, the focus is on you. You are encouraged to tune in to your particular developmental trajectory, search your own life stories, and apply what you learn about human behavior to your capacity to effectively influence others. The leadership development journey is rooted in your belief about who you are. The way you think about leadership influences the way you show up as a leader.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

The distinction between a coach and a mentor is that a coach does not offer advice but instead acts as a support as the individual makes choices that align with their goals. As a mentor, a leader has specific advice and guidance based on his or her own expertise. A leader as a sponsor is someone who tells others of the individuals achievements. Maybe this looks like recommending your employee for a promotion or sharing an innovation of theirs with senior leaders. As a sponsor you are helping others to see the potential in this individual, especially those that may not work with them regularly. Sponsorship is important to employee development because that's how others learn of an employee's capabilities.

So, here's an analogy that may help solidify these different roles. Think about the sport of bowling. In bowling, a person stands at the end of a long lane where 10 pins are set up in a triangle at the other end and the person then throws a heavy ball toward the pins to knock them down. The trick is that the lane is long, so it takes some strategy and skill to throw the ball correctly and along each side of the lane are gutters, and if the ball rolls into the gutter, of course no pins will be knocked down at all. When little kids bowl, there are often rails along the sides of the gutters, it prevents the ball from rolling into the gutters as the kids learn how to throw with strength and precision. These gutter rails are like a coach, they simply keep you in your lane. There's no expertise required to be a rail, it simply exists, but it's there to prevent the ball from falling off the lane and therefore keeps it on its journey toward the pins. Because the ball is heavy and it must be thrown in a particular way the throw needs strength and precision, there's an art to this. A mentor might be another bowler who is bold for a long time, that mentor could show the new bowler how to stand, how to throw it in the straight line or throw it with the right curve and even how to increase the speed of the throw. In this case the mentor is giving specific advice on the skill of the game based on experience.

When you're bowling, your usually only paying attention to your lane and maybe the immediate group of people you're playing with, a sponsor might go to another lane and tell one of the pros to come, take a look at how much you've learned over the course of one lesson. A sponsor might go to someone in charge and recommend you as a member of a league. As you can see, coach, mentor and sponsor roles are all important to the development of the bowler and that's the same as developing future leaders.

So, imagine you're going to run a marathon, right? So if you're running a marathon, you need all three, right? First of all, your mentor is going to be the person that says, I've done this before, hey, here's my advice. So they me give you some advice about how to run this race, what to eat, how to prepare. Your coach is going to be with you every step of the way, right? They're not going to tell you what to do, but they're going to be with you, they're going to facilitate the questions. They're going to provoke thoughts around what you should do, they're going to motivate you, they're going to hold you accountable, so that's the coach. The sponsor what they do is they're finding the best races for you. You don't even know, they're like, hey, I got you in the boston marathon, your sponsor might do that or, hey, I talked to my friend, they're going to get you in the Boston marathon or whatever or the Chicago marathon and so those are like the three distinct roles.  Any given leader is going to play all of these roles to differing degrees with their employees. And the question to ask yourself is when does this person need you to be a coach? When do they need you to be a mentor? The leader-follower or leader-employee relationship is in and of itself complex, and at any given point the role of the leader should consider what employees need the most to effectively solve the problems they were hired to solve.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

When we put on our coaching hat as leaders, we are simply there to support the other person on their journey. In the field of leadership coaching in particular, we say that people are creative, resourceful and whole. Coaches are there to help give structure to an individual who is trying to become the best version of themselves. As a coach, a leader doesn't have to have any particular expertise. A coach does not tell someone what to do, but ask questions to allow that person to reflect on their choices and offer support for the choices that the other person makes. A leader as a mentor is sharing advice learned through experience. The concept of a mentor assumes that a leader has some specific experience in an area that they can pass on to another person. Maybe the mentor has gone through the exact same career path with the company as the person they are mentoring. Maybe the leader mentor has technical expertise that they can share to help another person grow into a particular role.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

-Karthik Gurumurthy

What does the concept of leadership mean to you? What stands out to you? What's important to you about leadership? 

Personally to me, it's an ongoing process. It's inherently developmental.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

From Haryana's fields, a legend did rise,
With fiery spirit and glint in his eyes.
Kapil Dev, the name that rings true,
India's hero, with deeds bold and new.

His bat, a wand, conjuring runs untold,
Hooks and pulls, stories bravely unfold.
At Tunbridge wells  he stood, defiant and tall,
175 runs, a champion's call.

The World Cup gleamed, a distant desire,
Underdogs they were, fueled by inner fire.
With ball in hand, he unleashed his might,
Swing and seam, taking wickets in flight.

Zimbabwe's despair, a final stand made,
But Kapil soared, victory displayed.
The cup held high, a nation took flight,
Cricket's new dawn, bathed in golden light.

More than runs and wickets, a spirit he gave,
Never say die, a belief brave.
His captaincy, fierce and fair,
A team united, a challenge to dare.

From Ranji grounds to international fame,
Kapil Dev's legend, forever the same.
An inspiration, a story to tell,
The Haryana Hurricane, etching his spell.

Happy Birthday, the Greatest allrounder India has ever produced!