 Welcome. Welcome to yet another edition of Dreamers in Unicorns Chat Show, the place where you get to meet the most happening, the most creative, the most entrepreneurial people and talk about really what makes them Dreamers, what makes them unicorns and of course we also sometimes have market shapers in disguise. So you'll get to meet all of them here and today I have a really interesting person whose work fascinated me and his name is Ankit Durga. He's the co-founder and CEO of a startup called Skillr which is, as he describes it, I'm going to read that out, a talent intelligence platform that helps organizations discover and develop future ready behavioral skills. In addition to providing talent solutions to marquee brands, Skillr which is the company Ankit has co-founded, Skillr also created one of the first job crackers to help job seekers find opportunities during the Covid crisis and this is not the first startup for Ankit. Before this, Ankit started LEAP Skills which is again a skills tech organization that has trained over 50,000 learners from underserved geographies in India. He serves as a non-executive director of IABT Foundation but I don't know what IABT Foundation stands for so I'm going to invite Ankit. Welcome Ankit. Thank you. What does IABT stand for? I was just sort of intriguing. Yeah, IABT actually LEAPs Foundation and it stands for India and Bharat together. It kind of sort of tries to bridge the gap between what rule youth have available to them and what they need to be able to build meaningful impactful careers for themselves. So through the foundation we mostly look at awareness building and agency building for rule youth. You've got a lot of other impressive credentials. Ankit is an Inc and Global Social Benefit Institute Fellow and he has been recognized by MIT for creating inclusive technology led training solutions for the digital economy. He's also an alumnus of the Dune School Delhi University and Harvard's executive program for strategic non-profit management. Ankit, I'm very impressed. I am deeply impressed. So thanks for coming and talking to us. Tell me a little about this whole thing of, you know, when you started LEAP Skills and I'll tell you what got me interested. So the reason why I decided to talk to you on this particular show, you know, very often one of the questions that people asked me is, you know, what is the best kind of a skill to build? What subject should one choose in college? If someone is just getting into, you know, the beginning of their career. I think that question has three or four things which are sort of a little obsolete of solace is built in. One of them is that, you know, these skills that we talk about, all of them have a very short shelf life. So, you know, no matter what you study in school or college, you will have to continue to study that across your life. And a lot of things change. In my own case, you know, I specialized in human resources. Actually, the subject was called personal management and industrial relations at that point of time. The subject evolved later to human resources and now talent management, which is what I work in. You're actually a step ahead. You work in talent intelligence. So that changed. If I look at, you know, where I ended up the last employment that I had was that of a chief learning officer. That job didn't exist. I mean, there was no such job when I started. And of course, the company Vipro, which I, you know, was finally working for, which is predominantly now known for besides, of course, as consumer goods, you're a product. It's also known for its IT services. The whole sector, IT, ITS didn't exist. So the sector didn't exist. The company had a different product. The job that I had didn't exist. But all through, I think I remember one of the things that people talked about, that is the soft skills that really matter. So that's really what got me interested. Is that a thesis that you subscribe to? Absolutely. So I think, I mean, like you rightly said, you know, the half life of technical skills has really reduced from what it used to be, you know, technology is changing at, you know, a great pace. And the one, the one sort of skill that's been sort of consistent through all of this change. Those have been the behavioral skills, the future eddy skills that we are talking about. And there is, there's enough sort of intelligence now on the fact that about a third of the skills that are in demand today will be completely obsolete in about five years time. So that's, that's really fast pace of change. And, and we've also instantly undergone one of the greatest transformations in human resources over the last one year. So things have changed even faster than we anticipated. And, and what we really need to build, what we really need to be prepared for is this change. So you can't, you know, while you can't possibly predict everything that's going to happen in the future, the future is volatile, the future is uncertain, the future is ambiguous. So and complex. And so the one thing that you can really do for yourself as professionals, as organizations, as entrepreneurs, is to build a greater range and to build flexibility and adaptability as skills, so that you're, you know, sort of equipping yourself to, to take on those challenges, which you actually don't even know about today. And, and these behavioral skills, these traits that you need to sort of build in, these are the skills that enable you to do that in the future that's ambiguous completely. Fabulous. So, of course, I'm going to sort of talk to you a lot more about your specific skills, the five skills, and you kind of mentioned five skills. And I only know one of them that I know you're going to talk about. So, but I was quite intrigued by the fact that when you look at building a company around skill building, skill discovery, skill building, all of that, in that case, you know, what is the size of the market? How large is this problem that you're trying to solve? Talk to me about that. So that's, that's interesting. There are obviously, you know, like I said, the change that's coming in the market, the change that's coming as a result of digital transformation, automation, you know, industries changing drastically, like you spoke about, you know, Wipro, that there is, there is a very fast pace of change and 80% of the workforce today feels ill-equipped to handle that change. I was doing some research and we'd spoken to a bunch of managers and senior leaders and 92% of managers feel ill-equipped to handle any kind of complex changes that are coming in the future. 77% of senior leadership feels that they are ill-equipped to handle this. And this, in spite of the fact that globally, organizations spend about $470 billion on L&D and on upskilling and reskilling their workforce. A lot of this now is on technology. A lot of this now has been traditionally on technical skills, but there is this sudden urgency and understanding of the fact that these soft skills, these behavioral skills are very, very important and are going to be, you know, the front-runners of this change going forward. So it's largely about $470 billion, you know, industry. And even when you look at specific employers at an individual level, that's something that we learned at LeapSkills while we were working with over 200 employers, that on an average, each employer spends 40% over and above each employee's, each team member's salary to, you know, hire, train, onboard, retain, you know, engage. A lot of that, you know, that talent value change essentially, 40% of that, you know, of their annual salaries is spent doing that in addition to their salaries. And that's significant cumulative cost. And given that we now have to prepare organizations and organizations have a lot of hard lesson through COVID and are settling into, you know, the new normal, it'll be a huge investment and adjustment that organizations will have to make going forward, you know, from a skilling point of view, from that people point of view. You know, we have a question here from Amar, whose question is, what really is a future-ready behavior skill and how does it have an impact on career development? Sure. So, I mean, a future-ready behavioral skill essentially is a skill that enables you to handle, you know, to enable, enables you to sort of handle change, equips you to handle ambiguity, complexity, and is what prepares you in a resilient way, builds, you know, builds you as a resilient workforce member and gets you ready for, you know, work of the future. So that's essentially what future-ready behavioral skill is. I can give you examples that will help you understand this better. You know, traditionally, for example, organizations have been spending a lot of time training and skilling themselves and their employees on technical skills, on skills that help build efficiency, but that efficiency is turning to resilience. So now, organizational design is moving from design for efficiency to design for resilience. And for resilience, essentially, you need to build skills which are future-ready, which help organizations and, you know, employees to take on challenges that they have not heard of that they don't know about. And you maybe, as an engineer, for example, you may be coding, for example, today in, let's say, React or Node or whatever the latest language today is that engineers code in. But that language is bound to change five years from now. That language will probably not exist. It will be obsolete. There will be better tools that are out there. We are already talking about low code and no code environments. So we will move to a place where these technical skills will become obsolete. But what you need there are behavioral skills that help you understand, you know, what are the new kind of technologies that you need to work with that enable you to take on these new technologies, learn these new technologies quickly and apply them at work. So skills which essentially help you, you know, help you in a behavioral way to adapt to complexity. That's what future-ready behavioral skills really means. And, you know, Ankit, I would also add another thing that when you look at the technical skills that are, you know, that we talk about, that whatever the coding language or if you are a human resource, if you are a dentist, I mean, because I'm saying dentist because I saw all the people have joined and, you know, I saw some interesting work that some people are doing. For example, someone said that I coach, I'm a coach for introverted people, you know, so that I just thought that's an interesting dimension. So they're all there. You can see them in the comments there. But I think when you look at what is common to everyone is that the way that we engage with others, the way that we communicate our ideas and the way that we adapt ourselves to the world. I mean, I think those are some of the behavioral skills that we are talking about. Is that a reasonable way to describe it? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, like I said, you know, these future-ready skills essentially are, you know, our skills which will adapt to the new normal and also are very predictive of, as a result, predictive today of future work. So that's, you know, so you may be a coach, for example, who's working with introverted people, there are new, you know, sort of theories and hypotheses that are coming around, maybe emotional intelligence, which are absolutely new, which maybe we haven't studied. But how do you sort of go about adapting to these new theories? How do you do your research? How do you make sure that you apply this at the workplace and with especially the people that you're working with, you'll need to be agile, you'll need to be flexible, you'll need to learn new things, and therefore like a lot of these skills essentially are applicable for everyone. And your platform skill, you know, does this appeal to the individual? Is this something the individual connects with you for or is it something the organizations have to work with you and then they work with it? Tell me about that. So the platform right now is completely geared towards employers. So we essentially help organizations discover and develop a future behavioral skills in their teams. Now, they use it in different ways. For example, they use it for hiring people. So for talent acquisition and understanding basically first, what are the skills that they need from a behavioral skill standpoint, and then assessing candidate pools on those skills. And they're also using the platform for assessing their internal teams, evaluating internal teams, understanding where the strengths and gaps are in terms of behavioral skills. And then, you know, mapping the right people to the right job internally, as well as, you know, making skill-based decisions like promotions, like giving people new opportunities, getting people to run, say digital transformation and different, you know, different processes within the company. So it's right now completely employer focused. But we are actively exploring how we can make this available to individuals and also give them the, you know, the much needed input around how do you make yourself future ready? How do you build behavioral skills in yourself? How do you sort of get the right kind of recommendations that help you build these skills in the future? All right. Before we get into, you know, talking about the five skills which you got me all intrigued about, there's a question here from Sanjeev Saigal. His question is, is there still a premium on domain skills rather than life skills? And do you see the organizations changing their approach? What is your take on that? That's a very good question. There is definitely, you know, there is definitely a world that's changing in terms of focusing just on technical domain skills and prioritizing these behavioral skills and these soft skills as the question mentioned. And I think that's happening primarily because people are accepting, like I said, the change in technology. They are realizing that they need people for the long haul. They need people to be retained. And in order to do that, it's not that they need someone who is good at the role or for the role that they are hiring for today, but also will be able to take on better challenges, more challenges in the future. And that's something that we are hearing from employees across the board. You know, especially for young professionals, and I want to mention this specifically for young professionals when employers are hiring today, they're not specifically looking just at technical skills. There the awareness is much greater when it comes to, you know, skills that help you measure reliability in young professionals. Trainability, if they are, for example, given the right kind of resources, who can learn really fast, who can apply these trainings that work really quickly, and also potential for growth. So a lot of the employers that we speak with say that, you know what, I don't really care that much about technical skills because I will train them anyway. It's easy to train them in technical skills, but I want someone who has the right attitude. I want someone who has a fire in the belly. I want someone who's able to hit the ground running and is motivated to learn. And I think that, you know, that kind of awareness and that feeling amongst employers, I think is gradually increasing. And there is definitely a shift. There's definitely a shift in terms of priorities amongst domain skills and soft skills. So all right, I'm just going to sort of periodically summarize just so that you know, those of us who joined a little later. So, you know, we are talking to Ankit Durga, he's the co-founder and CEO of Skillr SKILLR. Was that just a wrong spelling or do you spell it purposely like that? Yeah, it was a play on words. We also wanted to, you know, it was, it was, it's without the obviously, we wanted to call it a killer solution for organizations. All right. Okay. Yeah. You know, if you don't have skills, you get killed. So that's, I totally buy that. I'm going to sort of get started on the five skills. And I kind of, you know, let me guess that I would think that the first skill that comes to my mind would be, you know, the way that we communicate with each other. Is that absolutely, I think that's a big, yeah, true. I think that's a big one, persuasive communication, professional communication is a big one. There is definitely a lot more awareness about communication skills in the market as opposed to the other, you know, future-ready behavioral skills. And so I agree with you. Yeah, communication is definitely a big one. Perfect. Because what I'd like to do now, Ankit, for these five skills, let's talk about the, you know, what does the skill mean, why we sort of think it's important. And then we'll talk about how do you build it? Because eventually I'd like to know how do I improve my skill, you know, those five skills. So for me, the reason why I think communication skills becomes really important, because if you look at the way we communicate has changed so much, you know, the fact that we have, you know, people who are communicating, you know, via many different kinds of media, you know, you're communicating on a given day, you're communicating on different apps, you know, you're sort of connecting with friends and Facebook with colleagues and friends and WhatsApp, you're looking at, you know, voice notes, there are visuals, you're looking at Zoom, you're looking at all these audio platforms like Clubhouse, which I am deeply fascinated by. And all these different things and social media, which remains, of course, one of the big places where people are communicating, they're picking up information from there. And yet, when you think of organizations, most of the times, organizations are much slower to adapt than the individual employees. And in my view, you know, you're looking at people who are really, you know, the organizations are still limiting themselves to email and the written communication, or their authorized platforms, some of which is legit, because you know, you're looking at safety, all of that. But there are aspects in my mind, the ability to ask a question in a crisp manner is such a powerful skill. I go to a conference you see that, you know, sometimes, a lot of times people take a lot of time to articulate what they are thinking about. All the importance of writing as a skill. Is that how you are defining it? And what have I left out in this whole piece? Right, absolutely. I think, I mean, we've covered some of the big aspects of communication, right? One is, it's definitely about sharing your ideas well, coherently, but it's articulating, articulation is such an important part of communication, right? Like, how do you, how do you articulate it in a very concise manner, which is able to sort of convey the message? I think, I mean, beyond just, you know, communication in terms of how you communicate with people, I just directly, I feel like there are some other components like verbal and nonverbal cues, we often miss out on the fact that nonverbal cues are extremely important parts of communication. We also, you know, don't think as much about listening. And listening is such a big part of communication, like you said, bringing the right, you know, being able to articulate thoughts, bringing people into the discussion, listening empathetically in a way that you are able to understand, you know, other people. Such a big part of communication also, you know, also sort of breaking down of complex ideas, you know, I think people also, you know, struggle with articulation because they're not able to break down a very complex idea in their minds. And that's also, I think, a huge one for communication. And I think, you know, I mean, the scope of, you know, professional communication is huge because it's being used at the time of your interview, while you're selling, you know, your capability and your potential, you know, to your employer. It's also being used to persuade people that you're working with, bringing peers together, getting the outcome that you want, you know, sort of sharing your ideas with them, influencing them when required. And then when you become a young leader, when you become a young manager, probably the most important skill that you need in the beginning, which is going to enable you to delegate your work, which is, you know, going to help you influence people and, you know, let you sort of share your decisions and ideas with your teams. So it's, it's across the board, it's across the value chain of employees. And, and which is why I think it gets, it gets the, you know, right kind of attention that it needs right now. And in addition to that, definitely, like you mentioned, you know, written communication is obviously a big thing in organizations and will continue to be so. And, and, you know, how would you build some of these communication skills, professional communication skills, as you describe it? How would you do that? Can you share a couple of tips with me? Sure, absolutely. So this is something that we worked a lot on in Leap Skills, you know, because typically we worked with, you know, college students who were in under-resourced colleges tier three, tier four cities, they obviously did not get the right kind of exposure right kind of, you know, foundational education that will help them sort of build, say, you know, English communication. And, and, and they used to just go into these, you know, interviews with big companies, very capable young people, you know, have that motivation, but completely freeze because they're not confident and they're not being able to articulate that idea as well. And so the one thing that one big thing that I learned about communication there is that this is always something that we hear about maths when we are kids that practice, practice, practice. We should hear, we should be told the same thing about communications skills. So what you really need is an environment that helps you practice and you talk and you make mistakes and then there are peers and, you know, trainers who help you, you know, correct those mistakes, but practice is also a golden rule for communication. So even if you're a seasoned professional and you struggle with maybe conducting meetings or, you know, as a leader, you struggle with communicating with your teams, the only solution to that in a big way is practice, you know, just put yourself out there and practice as much as possible. A couple of other smaller tips that I maybe have is something that I haven't seen a lot of people do is prep. I think preparation is definitely underestimated when it comes to communication. So spend enough time preparing for sessions, spend enough time preparing for important conversations that you have coming up, you know, don't don't make it last minute, don't just have, you know, notes in your mind, take notes, you know, put it down, you know, on paper. And yeah, I think some of those are some of the big tips that I have around communication, prep time, practice as much as possible and take notes. That's something that we definitely don't see enough of. And, you know, for example, you have these sketch notes, right? That's one format of, you know, you know, having that recall value and understanding a concept while breaking it down. And that I'm sure helps you articulate those ideas better because you've done that exercise of breaking it down. So there are different formats that work for different people. And, and I think, yeah, I think that those are some of the ways in which we can build communication. At least. So thanks, I mean, that's super helpful. I fully agree. I think, you know, because you talked about, you know, a couple of things that professional communication is something you need at every stage, you know, to get a job, you need to be able to sell your ideas and 40% of everyone's job, every job is a sales job. You're selling ideas, you're selling products, you're selling services, whatever it is you are doing, you're trying to persuade somebody to change their mind. You know, you even want somebody to, you know, add you on to something else, send you an invite to something, anything that you're doing, you're selling. So the ability to do that, so written communication, how to improve that, spoken communication, the ability to listen, that was the other thing you said. And you kind of also talked about, you also said that prepare yourself. That's the first one. You also said that besides preparing, you recommend that we also write down, take notes, and you know, I like to draw them out, but you know, because I find that when I read something, when I summarize in my head, if I visualize it once, so I draw it out, I will, I mean, I'll recall it many years later also. So I think that works for me. But yeah, just simple notes also works. So that's great. That's the first one. What is the second, you know, second skill that you talk about? Yeah, so we, you know, we often talk about grit in a big way. And that's actually something that has, yeah, great is, is a skill that's, you know, in the past been associated a lot with entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurs who are building organizations and who are, you know, obviously going to face a lot of challenges, how they need great as a primary skill, great essentially means passion and perseverance. So how do you sort of identify what you really want to work towards, you know, and what your passion is. And then how do you persevere, how do you make it through obstacles to achieve long term goals around that. So that's, that's what great really is. And I obviously have, you know, my great has been tested over and over again as an entrepreneur over the last eight, nine years. I remember, you know, my, you know, one of my favorite stories, personal stories about great is how, you know, we were actually rolling out programs for skill training for college students in Panipat in Haryana. And this was a really small college under resourced, did not historically ever get any placements. And we'd come in here and we'd said that, you know, we have a track record, we've been working in Haryana for the last four years. We have a track record of over 90% placements. We will help you guys get jobs. And of course, there were multiple challenges, you know, there was an aspiration issue, people were not aware of private sector jobs, they wanted, you know, government jobs. And we were sitting there in blistering heat, the college had given us a small table and a chair outside the, you know, outside the classroom area. And we were sitting there in the heat in the sun, this is August, so it was really hot. And four of us were sitting from the team, waiting to get admissions. And we sat there for about 10 days and we got nine admissions. We'd actually gone and prepared for 120. So that was, you know, that was a huge hit. And it, you know, it challenged everything that we thought about our work and everything that we'd showcased everything that we've worked hard for. And, and there are many, many days, many instances, many angles in which, you know, what you really do is attack, you know, on a regular basis when you're an entrepreneur. But, but I do think that, you know, for example, COVID challenged us at so many different levels in whatever job we may be. And I think what really sort of got us through is, is our own personal grit. And, and that's what, that's, that's what it really means, the ability to think about long-term goals, think about your passion and then make meaning out of obstacles, right? Like how do you sort of make lessons out of your obstacles that you're facing the challenges that you've faced so far? Brilliant. That's just so powerful. There is, of course, you know, Angela Duckworth, who I once interviewed for my website, and it's a lovely interview that I had with her, and she talks about grit a lot. And just, you know, for me, it is just the ability to hang on tight despite the, you know, despite how bad it may seem. And in some sense, there is also a sense of optimism built into it that I will get through, you know, which is sort of built in. So that's really powerful that, you know, you talked about grit as an important element. So when you talked about a couple of things, if I were to summarize before I ask you for tips, you said grit is the ability to hold on to long-term goals, you know, and sort of just pursue them, make sense of their, of all the obstacles that come in the way without really getting disappointed. And, you know, just being able to navigate and just stay the course until you hit that achievement. One of the best examples of grit is, of course, when people pursue their PhD, you know, they're working on a vague problem, a lot of times it changes shape, all that, and still to be able to, you know, go through year after year to pursue that one goal that, you know, you will discover something. That to me is a very good example of grit, but there are many owes. How does one build it? I mean, is this something, you know, one can learn or is this something you're just simply born with, you have it or you don't have it? I know as an entrepreneur, that's one thing that gets tested. For me, I can totally relate, you know, over and over again, every day. Yes. But how does one build it? Absolutely. So, I mean, since you mentioned Angela Duckworth, she's obviously done a lot of work around this and has spoken about how grit really is a muscle that can be built and it can be built, you know, through in various ways. And since we were talking about examples of grit and you mentioned PhD, I think, and every day example for this would be, you know, I see this as going to the gym, right? There are so many people who want to work out, who want to go to the gym, who have newer resolutions, but are unable to really do that. And there are some friends of mine who are interesting, who always look for partners, you know, who, you know, try and convince you that, hey, listen, why don't you come with me? Because if you come, then, you know, I will, you know, I will sort of keep at it. Maybe I'll get more of an incentive to go to the gym. So, this happens in an everyday, you know, case. And that's the first tip. I feel like, you know, an accountability partner is a great tact to build grit. So, you know, it may be at work, if you want to build grit, it may be a colleague, a peer that you may be working with, you know, a mentor or a coach that you have, who you sort of share your, you know, goals with, share your passion with. And then you build this, you know, two-way accountability where you, you know, do this for each other and try and keep each other on track. That's definitely one, you know, big way in which, you know, grit can be built. And the other one, I think, for grit, something that's really important, something that I really encourage my team to do is try and sort of find what you really enjoy in the first place. I mean, there are aspects of your job that you may or may not enjoy. And it's really important to be able to be gritty and to be able to stick to a long-term goal. You really have to buy into it. You have to go all in. And so that, you know, that in the beginning, that initial exercise of figuring out, okay, this is something that I really like, this is something that's worth my time. And I'm going to be investing my energy and time into building this and chasing this goal. I think that's something that we don't do as much. We don't sort of question that process as much as we should. So yeah, so I feel like thinking about that, making sure that you're aligned with the long-term goal, making sure that you're going in all in, I think is really important. And then, you know, getting different ways, different tasks to hold yourself accountable to that is one big way of building it. There's a question here from a viewer, Sachin wants to know, what can an introvert person like me do to get into groups of people and blend with them whenever needed without losing the essence of being an introvert? So, you know, how do you sort of learn to connect faster? What is your tip for that? What have you seen people doing? Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like, you know, I feel like there has been historically the stigma around people who are introverts. I think that's being an introvert is, you know, absolutely not something that should be stigmatized. You know, some of the things that I feel like I'm an introvert at many levels, and I feel like the one thing that I do to handle that and to, you know, take care of that is find common ground. I think common ground is extremely important. There are people who will have common ground with you who you will build, who will you be, you will be able to build rapport with everywhere you go. It's just about, you know, having one-on-one conversations as opposed to group conversations, getting to know people better, finding out people who are you, who you have common ground with, and then using those relationships, those equations as anchors at the workplace instead of, you know, constantly feeling this need to, you know, be, you know, an extrovert and get along with everyone. That's not necessary. I think if you have one-on-one conversations and understand what your common ground with different people is, you will find anchors in those relationships and equations and build those, find those equations. I think that's something that one should spend time doing. Fantastic. So, Ankit, you know, any other tip to build grit, you know, anything else that you think comes to your mind, or should we talk about the third skill? No, absolutely. Like I said, grit is, you know, it's again, you know, overall for, you know, for behavioral skills in general, I mean this, the best way to build any behavioral skill, including grit, is to first assess, first understand what your baseline is, what you're really good at, what, you know, reflect on, you know, what your strengths and gaps are, seek feedback. So assess, I think that's very, very important. And then apply. So for example, if grit is a skill that you want to build, try and understand what your starting point is, and then apply it in an ongoing basis. So once you've identified, these are the three things that I really care about. And then you make sure that you stick to those and you do not get distracted and you do not sort of get disinterested or disconnected from those three things that you identified for yourself. That is one way. And then after you've assessed applied, it's really important to reflect. So, you know, then you sort of go back, maybe you have mentors and coaches, even if you don't, it's really important to sort of sit and reflect on your own and maybe, you know, document that process and understand, okay, this is what I learned from this journey. And it's not important. It's not always important to sort of, you know, stick through all of your goals. You will document that and you will see that, okay, I was not able to do these two, but I was able to do the third. This was the key difference between the third and the other two. And, and then you'll slowly get to know yourself better. So assess, apply, keep reflecting. So, and this cycle keeps, you know, keeps repeating essentially. That's, that's what the golden rule for every behavioral skill is. And, and, and this is the same for grit. Perfect. I was so terrific. I mean, you know, we have a viewer in the kill who says that I love the idea of finding common ground as a way to overcome introvertness. You know, there is a related question, which I'm going to take a quick one. Anushree wants to know how do you differentiate between grit and stubbornness? So, you know, I actually don't think that being being stubborn about your goals in your long term vision is a bad thing. It's, you know, but having said that it's really important to identify that in the beginning, right? I mean, if there is, if there is clarity of vision, if there is clarity of passion, and then being stubborn in the face of adversity, that's what grit really is. And if, if you are being stubborn about something that you've really gone all in for and you really have bought into, it's not a bad thing. Having said that, I think to be able to take care of, you know, that fine line between rationality and irrationality, you know, about grit, I think seeking feedback is great, which is why, you know, when you are reflecting mentors, guides, coaches become really important because they are the ones who can give you an outside in view and tell you that, okay, this is the bit that makes sense, but this doesn't. So external feedback may be really important to check, you know, for that fine line and making sure that you do not get distracted by a goal that you may have set. In my view, I would say that, you know, the ability to, you know, stick to a goal over the span of time would be great. But being open enough to, you know, discuss and talk to others, get feedback, learn. And, you know, sometimes change your mind about ideas is probably a good thing. It's about openness. So I think it's a balance. Too much of one or the other is probably not a great idea any which way. But that brings me to this third question. So you talked about, you know, grit as the second one. What's the third one that we should be looking at? We think of creativity and innovation a lot. Now that's something that, again, has been a buzzword in the past. You know, a lot of organizations have spoken about innovation at various levels. But innovation, you know, creativity is nothing but sort of, you know, new ideas, going in with new ideas, a new approach, reframing existing problems and trying to see them in a new light. And I think that's, you know, that's an important skill for the future because there is going to be a lot of reimagining of the future, reimagining of the normal. You know, like you said, you know, roles that, you know, will exist 10 years from now do not exist today. You know, knowledge base that will be very important, skills that will be really important 10 years from now does not exist today. So that's really important to sort of think about and understand that, you know, you really have to sort of have a greater range as a person and think about, you know, creativity, think about curiosity, think about innovation in a big way. So that's the third set of skills that I would definitely like to talk about. So you talked about this whole business of creativity and innovation. Is there a difference in your mind between the two? How do you differentiate creativity and innovation? What would you say? So I think, you know, I think it's really interesting. One is, you know, when we were sort of going and talking from a Risa's point of view, when we were building this framework, when we were going and talking to employers for skill and, you know, understanding from them, what are the skills that are important? Every skill that we are talking about right now has a different, there's a dictionary, almost every skill is called a different thing for different employers. It really depends on their context, really depends on their environment, their industry. So, so for sales, for field sales, for example, we spoke to a lot of financial services company, they're huge employers, and they always used to say that, and we continue to say that for our field sales personnel, what we need is resourcefulness, jugar. We want these people, you know, in the field sales force to be resourceful to, you know, be able to, you know, use jugar to, you know, get that outcome that they meet that target that they have. And that's essentially being able to think about, you know, what people really require and then sort of broke it down with the employers. What really is required is different angles, different approaches, new ideas, reframing of the challenge that they have. So that I feel like is creativity and innovation is a lot of that, but then, you know, sort of grounded in constraints, grounded in reality, a lot of innovation basically that happens across companies, marries these, it's at the intersection of resourcefulness and jugar and the reality and the constraints of the, you know, the environment and the reality. So, I mean, I think those are, that's the big, big, I mean, it's a fine line, but that's the difference between creativity and innovation. Sure, sure. And, you know, sometimes, you know, one could also say that the ability to apply your own creativity to solve a problem is the innovation aspect of it. And creativity sort of really also comes from another element of just being open to trying out many different things to some extent. But how does one build, how does one build this particular skill? Right. I think, you know, a couple of ways, and, you know, we were talking about this earlier, and you'd mentioned how, you know, creativity sometimes, and, you know, when I'd asked you a question around how do you think about curiosity and creativity, you'd mentioned that, you know, the, the, there is this notion around ROI and how ROI is really important around everything that we pick up. That's a very important thought, because, you know, it's really important to think about, you know, building skills, building your own self in ways that are outside of what can help you get real-time ROI. And that mindset needs to shift. So firstly, you need to sort of open yourself up. Like I said, creativity, innovation is about having a greater range as, you know, as professionals. So, opening yourself up is really important. One exercise that I have done, and which, which I find really, really useful is the what-if questions exercise, right? You sort of sit and you think about any problem that you would want. It doesn't have to be specifically professional, but any kind of concept or problem that you think about, and you go about doing a what-if questions exercise where you try and think about, you know, the different angles, the different, you know, approaches that you may want to approach a specific problem with. I think that's really, really important, I think, to build, to build this skill. And again, I mean, it just doesn't have to be internal. You can take it outside. And I feel brainstorming openly. I've seen that really impact creativity amongst teams, where we are able to sit, you know, in a group, and you really see the different angles, the different sort of ideas come about. And people processing those ideas real-time and say, oh, wow, I've never thought of it like that. I think that's, that's another big exercise that we really need to do. And again, like, I feel, I want to sort of hold on to that idea of the ROI that you'd mentioned, the need for an ROI. I feel like as people, we've forgotten the concept of picking up things, which, and doing things just, you know, just for the sake of it, right? Like, I mean, there are, you know, I'll be a lot of my friends right now, for example, who have always been readers, who have read in the past now, for example, read business books, self-help books, but they've always been readers. So what about reading fiction and fantasy? And that's something that you see very little of. And there are different things that may suit a person. So, you know, opening yourself up to those experiences, I also think builds creativity and innovation. So you talked about a couple of different things. One, you said is, you know, try out different kinds of things that you can read about, you know, if you're reading, you know, also, you're just meeting people from different professions and different socio-economic backgrounds, different age groups. That's really a fascinating way to sort of build that. Traveling to places which you haven't seen and looking at a place from the eyes of a local person, you know, so not to go to a place and sort of be the tourist, you know, what would the local do? How would they spend their time? I think I personally find that really encouraging. And somebody sort of pinged me and asked this question, what is ROI? So ROI is return on investment is just a term that I find that, you know, a lot of times when you ask people to do that, the first question that they think about is, what's the point? Why should I do that? You know, just the sheer joy of trying out something without it necessarily leading to something. And, you know, I have found that many a times when I have, you know, I never doodled because I thought one day I'm going to, you know, do this professionally and do my work professionally or write. I still write letters to friends and from there it sort of morphed into writing short stories. Some got published, some got rejected. They kind of, you know, tried different things. So I think just this ability to navigate and continually try it out. And so that's something I really enjoy doing, you know, not necessarily looking to either achieve and say that, if I'm not number one in that field, I'll go away. I mean, that's a killer. It may be great for a company, but as far as a human being is concerned, that's a terrible way to think about it. If I'm not number one and number two, I will not do it. Then you pretty much not do most of the things in life. At least I wouldn't because I'm not number one and number two in anything. So just being able to do something for the pure joy of it. I think that's okay. All right. So just remind me again, let's do a recap. What's the first thing you talked about was how do you build professional communication skills? Then you talked about grit as the second one. Grit was the second one. The third one was creativity and innovation. And innovation. And we said that there are different ways you can be more creative, basically try being open to new experiences. What is the fourth one? And you know, I also want to just take a moment to invite our listeners that if you have any questions about any of them, I'd love to hear your views and your comments. So keep them coming, just introduce yourself and ask your question. Meanwhile, Ankit's question to you is, what is the fourth skill that we should build? Yeah, it's cognitive flexibility. Now this one sounds a little intimidating, but it essentially means in the old school kind of dictionary, it's logical reasoning or straightforward reasoning. So how do you basically build that flexibility? And the reason I think it's been called cognitive flexibility now is because now the kind of shape that it's taken, it's a lot about connecting the dots, synthesizing information from various sources, thinking about logical and actionable conclusions. So that really is what cognitive flexibility is about. And one thing that's also used, a term that's used to describe it now in professional settings, especially in the tech world, is systems thinking. So how do you sort of break down a problem, break down any kind of challenge into smaller pieces and think about it from a logical point of view and try and see the flow, the try and see the gaps, identify what's missing, what can be improved. So that's what really cognitive flexibility is about systems thinking. And I think one way in which you see this being applied right now is again, entrepreneurs use this in a big way to try and identify opportunities in your workplace. If you are a techie, you may find different sort of avenues to improve something that's already happening in the organization. So that's again where connecting the dots, cognitive flexibility is required. And I think I would just like to sort of highlight the difference between the two. Creativity, innovation and cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility relies on a lot of prerequisite information. So it's not about just creating a new approach or reframing an existing problem or bringing in a new idea, it's a lot about understanding the status quo, coming in with all the prerequisite information, knowledge required to be able to address a specific problem and then breaking it down and thinking about it from a cognitively flexible manner. That's what cognitive flexibility is all about. Terrific. Before we go on to asking you how do we build it, we have a question from a viewer who says that my question is very basic, but I want to know from Ankit sir, how should we reply to the question, introduce yourself Sandeep? What is a punchy way to talk about the highlights of yourself and still sort of make an impression? What would you recommend? Sure. I mean, these are multiple LEAP classes that get you to this answer, but I can give you a few tips, Sandeep, if I'm not wrong. So Sandeep, I think a few things that have happened as a result of all the information that we have available online about how to answer specific questions has led to a very standardized, one-size-fits-all kind of answer from a candidate point of view. So a lot of employers often complain that when we ask candidates to introduce themselves, everyone has a very stenciled, very standard answer around, my name is this, I come from here, this is my interest, I've done this in the past. And I think that, honestly, it puts off employers. So what's really important, I mean, two, three big tips here is be authentic. Genuinely think about what defines you, what defines your career and professional interests. And again, this is an exercise on thinking. So you first have to sit down and honestly spend enough time thinking about what you are all about. And that's what you really have to communicate. But the second tip that I think is really important is that you have to connect yourself, you have to find that connection with the job, with the employer. So you have to also spend time knowing the opportunity, getting to know the employer, getting to know what the company is all about, and what would they look for and then connect your authentic self with that outcome and show them that bridge that, look, this is who I am, this is where I come from, this is my experience. And I think I'm genuinely interested in this job because I have read about your company and I've read about the employer and I feel like these are people that you're looking to hire and I'm a great bit. So be authentic and also do enough research on the interviewer or the interviewer's company to make sure that you're able to establish that connection between Sandeep the person and XYZ the employer. So if I were to ask you this question, Ankit, can you introduce yourself to the audience? I of course read out a large bio of yours, but if you had a 30 second pitch, how would you introduce yourself? All right, so I would probably go with my background first. So I'll just break it down for Sandeep's ease of use. I would first like to talk about who I am, what I've done in the past. So it's really important to be personal. So I would first start by saying that I am Ankit and I come from there. My father was in the defense services, so I've grown up all across India. I've seen different small towns and I went to a Delhi University, did my business degree there and started my career with Ernst & Young, which is a big four, realized that that's not for me, went and quickly got into the startup space, worked with Zomato when it was barely 50 people, was only present in a few cities in India. And that's when the entrepreneur bug bit me and met my co-founder, Megha, who was doing a lot of academic research on skills, the skilling ecosystem. We were constantly talking about how there is, how opportunity is a function of where one is born and how that needs to be fixed in this country. And that's what got us to start Leap Skills in 2013. I've been working on building Leap Skills over the last eight years. And recently, I also co-founded a company called Skillar, which is a talent intelligence platform like Abhijeet mentioned before. Outside of my work, I'm a drummer. I really like playing drums and I also collect stamps and I love listening to music all the time. So there's something personal about your background, there's something about your work, and then you will maybe talk about some other interests, something that humanizes you, something that sets you, makes you sound different from another person who may have different interests. And then, for example, if Abhijeet is hiding me for a job, I'd say that I think the work that you've done and the work that your organization does around consulting with people who are looking for different opportunities and looking for advancement in their careers and organizations that are looking to build resilient teams. I have a background in that. I've worked with 50,000 young professionals over the last eight years, worked with over 200 employers, really understood the problem, the dichotomy of demand and supply in India. And I think I'd be a great value add to how you approach this problem. So then the connection. So authentic and connection. You're hard. Completely hard. Right away. Awesome. So I want to move to this whole thing of how do you build cognitive flexibility if there are any tips that you can have? And because we are always, we could continue talking, but we are running a little low on time. So two or three tips on how to build cognitive flexibility. Yeah, quick tips. Again, like we were talking about systems thinking. So one of the things that we do often in the organization and done a lot of exercises in the past is around mind mapping. So essentially just breaking each process down, breaking each sort of set of thoughts down and putting them down on post-its. So literally, like the tip is, just take a stack of post-its and put different parts of the solution, part of the problem, whatever you're trying to brainstorm on, put that down on post-its and look at it as different smaller parts and see where the gaps and the opportunities are for improvement. So that's one exercise, happens a lot in design thinking. So that's one. The second one is a tool that helps me think about connecting the dark systems thinking is also the good old school pros and cons list. So whenever you're making your decision, whenever you're trying to approach a problem with a new solution, definitely look at both sides of the argument, approach, get multiple perspectives on the problem that you're trying to solve. Because that'll just train you to think about the problem more holistically. So you could also use tools like a pros and cons list to get the various angles of approaching a problem. I would add another method that I find very useful, which is to ask myself that take a very famous company and just say, how would they do it? For example, if you think about customer service or creativity, just ask, how would a company like Pixar approach this problem? How would a company like Disney approach this problem? So whatever, sort of doing that sometimes gets you to start thinking like them. So that's a sort of a shift you can create for yourself. Terrific example. And now we are coming to the last one. What would be the last digital skill that will prepare us for success in the digital future? It's good that this one's the last one because this one is really big. I think learning agility is the fifth skill that we like to talk about. So important and such a great lesson over the last one year of how you will always need to be agile, of how you will always need to learn new things. So learning agility is nothing but striving for continuous learning, continuous feedback, the ability to be flexible, adaptable, and the willingness to acquire new skills. So that's what learning agility really is about. And that's something, again, in my personal journey, I've faced it in a big way. It's something that I've had to develop to be able to become resilient and to be able to be future ready. Easiest example that I can give you is that I started off as a social entrepreneur, lived in small towns. I used to live in Haryana for about four years. And the idea that we lead skills when we started was a completely brick and mortar model, completely offline. And then three, four years later, we realized that if we have to scale this, and if we have to make sure that the quality is not diluted, and if we have to make this cheaper for our students or beneficiaries who come from really underserved backgrounds, we have to use technology in a big way. So now suddenly from someone who was managing operations, running between centers, trying to think about how training is done in the classroom, I had to shift to someone who had to understand how an app is built, how technology is built, how should we go about doing digital learning and building solutions for digital learning for our students. And we built technology which is now used in a big way, not just by lead skills, while we continue to work with different teachers and different training centers, but also by other parts of the ecosystem in the skill India mission and other skill providers in the skilling ecosystem. So that was only possible if I let myself be agile, let myself learn new things and acquire new skills. And that's a big one given all the volatility and the ambiguity that you're talking about in the future. So how does one continue to build, is this different from curiosity which you mentioned? How would that be different, learning agility versus curiosity? What's the difference? Curiosity, like you mentioned, like you rightly put it, it's for the, doing things for the joy of it, and also put yourself out there, being more open to exposure. Learning agility is an active investment in skills. So it's a lot more active in its approach. And one of the things that, for example, to think about is, this is something that we talked about in our friends circles, that is your entertainment budget as a young professional, higher or lower than your education budget. Because we are all investing a lot in subscriptions in terms of Netflix and Time and Hotstar and a ton of these other apps. But are we doing a quick check and seeing how much are we investing in education? And a lot of us are not investing as much. So a quick check is very important to understand whether you're investing in yourself actively, very actively seek out mentors, coaches, seniors who may be able to guide you, peers who may be, I read in your note yesterday, who may be one step ahead of you would be great people to take feedback from. So just investing in yourself, investing in upskilling, I think, is what is really important to be agile to build this as a skill. So I would sort of also say that you talked about is your entertainment budget lesser than or greater than the investment that you're doing in building your skills. I would actually have a different measure. I would say, do you spend more on your mobile phone than you do on your skill development? I think is a better thing to also ask for, because a lot of us don't hesitate to spend X amount of money buying a mobile phone. But we'll somebody says, spend this kind of money on attending a program or doing something which said, no, no, I can't afford that. I mean, that's the way it is. So I think it's a great piece that you talked about. We are coming up to the end of the hour. So if I were to just simply summarize the five skills, which is there, you were telling me that I was asking if there is a way I could find out for myself, what is it that I can do to get these assessed for myself? And so Ankit said that, okay, you can actually go to this particular link and just click that. So I'm going to just ask you, this is a free link anyone can use. So I'm just going to put this. So there is a free assessment guys, you can just jot this down. So it's HTTPSbit.ly and then you have the stuff which is coming up on the ticker. You can read that and you can note that down. So and I'm just quickly going to add that. So this is the assessment measures, some of these skills that we spoke about today and what you will, like we mentioned earlier that skill is completely employer facing right now. We don't have individual solutions, but this is something that we've opened up. And what you will get in return is a very detailed report on these skills, where you stand, what your score is on each of the different skills. So this assessment has cognitive flexibility, which we spoke about learning agility, grit in a big way and creativity and innovation. So those are the four skills that we've spoken about in addition to professional communication. Outside of these, outside of professional communication, these four is what this assessment is going to measure and give you a very detailed report on where you stand and also recommendations on how you can build these bases, your score. So a customized report will be given to everyone who uses this and it's completely free to use. Terrific. You have Dr. Pankaj Gupta, who says it was great and highly enriching conversation, hearty compliments. You also have Mala Bhattagar, who says a great discussion, excellent questions, awesome responses. So thank you very much. I mean, so appreciate you're doing this. Ankit, I must say that this is an easy one for me because I always think that the behavioral skills are under leveraged and most people just focus on getting the cognitive skills, the technical skills, which is important, but those will keep shifting. But I think the behavioral skills take a long time for us to build. So investing in them early and on a continuous basis is probably something that employers should really do to make sure that the organization stays future ready. And I think at some point of time, I would really say that you should really think about, you should really think about getting this set of skills available to also individuals. So maybe I'm working at an organization which doesn't believe in doing that. So my real recommendation, it would be that just consider bringing this to the individual. So whoever wants to do it should really be able to do that. And with that, Ankit, if somebody wanted to connect with you and find out about skill, can you just quickly share the links and places where you can be reached? Sure, absolutely. I'm happy to connect over LinkedIn. My name is Ankit Durga, as you can see on the screen. So please add me on LinkedIn and ask me any questions that you need. And feel free to use the assessment like we had mentioned earlier. And thank you, Aviji. This was really good. I really enjoyed the conversation. And I take your point. I think it's really important for us as individuals also to be able to have access to these skills and ways in which we can improve them because I do think that is a big piece that's missing. Not all organizations are investing in a big way. I do think that's going to change significantly over the coming years. But definitely something that we are working towards actively to make it available for individuals in the coming few months. So all those who are asking, can you repeat this URL again? It's right there. It's there at the ticker. You can see that. But in the meanwhile, just I really want to say thank you so very much. It was great. And it just reminded me that yesterday on LinkedIn, I wrote this newsletter where I said wobbling is your superpower. When you learn to ride the cycle, we wobble a lot. You are not steady. And that really is a sign that you are learning something. So I hope we'll all stay wobbly. And thank you so very much, Ankit. It was terrific learning from you and about these five skills. So it was great. Thanks a lot. I appreciate you sharing this free assessment with all our viewers. I hope they get value out of it. See you again next week for yet another conversation with a dreamer and a unicorn. And just the hint, it is going to be something you would truly enjoy just as much as you did this one too. Thanks. Bye-bye.