 It's horrible, cool. So I just want to understand, people in this room, you guys have seen the slides already, have you? No? Nobody? So that's the reason you're here? So what I want to understand is I just want to really understand if this is at the right level for all of you, because some of you might be doing it already and some of you might want to know more. So that's one of the reasons why I've always put my PPTs in place so you guys know what it takes. So what am I doing in an agile conference? What am I talking about? Something which is not even related to agile and how it's going to be relevant. So any idea? So any thoughts? Do you have any clues? What do I even mean by it's not an agile story when I'm going to talk in an agile life cycle topic? Any idea? No? Nothing? All right, cool. So let's begin with this. So you guys know these two mythology characters. They are from the Greek mythology. They are called the Apollo and Dinoces. You know what they represent, anyone? You know who Apollo is, who Dinoces is? Anyone? No? All right, so Apollo and Dinoces are the two sons of the one of the great gods who exist. So they represent logic and emotions. That's what they represent. So which is something which is very common. We all know there are multiple instances. It's not just about Apollo and Dinoces. We have Ingen Yang. We have Water and Chaos. We have Black and Red. We have Sun and Moon. We have Day and Night and a lot of things. And we also have something which is the items on the right versus the items on the left. So does it bring any bell? Does it sound familiar? Remember the agile manifesto? So technically, when we speak of agile manifesto, the crux, what are they trying to say is about something which is very fundamental, which is very fundamental, not just for agile, but for anything and everything in life. You guys agree? Everyone? So obviously, so if there is a case, there has to be a reason why even the agile manifesto was even written. It should be like something about something was not happening in the past. And there was a reason. And hence, we have an agile manifesto. And today, we are at an agile conference after a couple of decades. But unfortunately today, so when I listen to a lot of speakers, when I have this keynote conversation with a lot of other people who are in the conference today, what do we hear now? We just say that people are telling me that agile is dead. So do you think agile is dead? Anyone? Yes? So why do you think agile is dead? So if I'm saying there was a reason why agile was formed in first place, but today, if I'm going to say that agile is dead, in my mind, it means that the reason is dead. Isn't it? Does it make sense? Possibly, one of the ways how we can actually bring back agile, give some life to agile is somewhere, doing something, and trying to restore that balance that we are talking about. What is this balance? Again, the things about right versus the left. That's all it is. So I do believe that even though we have not embraced the balance yet, that is something we all agree, but there is some progress. That is a lot of hope, meaning we all acknowledge today that there is a need for behaviors and there is a need to address this challenge. And listen until the business address, we cannot reach the agility that we are looking at. It's not just about the management practices. It's not just about the technical practices. We also understand the human needs and human emotions, right? So that's what I'm gonna talk about today. So to give you a quick intro, who I am, what I am, and all that. So I work for agile FAQs. I am one of the agile coaches and my name is Karthik Kamal Balasubramaniam. So I have been a techie initially. I was a developer and then I started coaching and all that, but this was not sufficient. If I have to give an introduction to myself, I felt, to say that I'm an agile coach, I felt that it's not just me because a lot of parts to me, that's why I call myself a greedy soul. Because I do a lot of other things as well. I have a book club of my own. You guys are welcome if you're interested. And I also have a small NGO that I run. Like I also am part of a Latin American crew. So this is what I am, you know. It's like I'm not just an agile coach. I'm like a combination of all of it. Likewise, I understand most people in this room are also like that. So when I ask you who you are, it's not about what titles you have, but it's about who the person you are. So why am I even talking about this? Because the topic that we're gonna deal with today has some relevance to this particular aspect. So before we get into the topic itself, the tools that I'm gonna teach you, I would like to quickly say, give a quick appreciation for all the paintings that you see here. Like what am I gonna do here? If you see most of these qualities, when we say feelings and emotions and all that, often they are represented as a feminine quality. You know, it has been called as the other part. So I'm gonna use most of the images from this particular artist. All credits to her. Her name is Shiloh Shilaman. So you guys know her? Anyone? Anybody from Bangaloo here? Is this two people from Bangaloo? Nobody else? There are a lot of graffitis in the city. You know, if you go around Kuru Mangala Jyoti Neva's college, there's a lot of graffitis from her, which is very powerful in terms of how she represents human and human emotions, especially women. So this is gonna be the context here. And the disclaimers that I would like to make us, see these things are very people-oriented processes. So I'm not trying to judge people here. I'm not saying that people are like this. This is how we are gonna be. But what am I gonna say? I'll just say later, I'm not trying to judge people here. And also, I'm just making a huge disclaimer here. I might be totally wrong. Whatever I'm gonna say today is gonna be wrong. You might have a different perception, but that is okay, right? So now let's get on to it. So what is happening? You know, one of the concerns that I have, even when we talk about human issues, people often talk about human issues on a very subjective way. You guys agree on that? What I mean by subjective way is, so let's say if there is a problem in the team, I was just mentioning a lot of topics here which had relevance to people, feelings, and all that. When you ask them, what are we doing? Like say, if you have a conflict in your team, what do you do? What is your solution? What all things you can do? Give me an example. I would like to hear an example. Get them to talk to each other, okay? So what will happen if they're talking with each other? Will that be resolved? Sometimes it may not be resolved, okay? So if you have to build your team moral, what is it you will do? What is the common thing we all do? Take them for team outing? That's one of them, like what else? Sorry? How will you do that? How are we doing this? This is what I'm trying to understand because often I hear people talk about very subjective stuff in terms of I'm gonna make people work together and I'm gonna take them for team outing, I'm gonna increase the morale, I'm gonna make sure there are no conflicts, but how are you planning to do that? Wonderful, sounds very nice, but how? What are you gonna use? You know, okay, all right, sounds good. So let's say if two of your developers are not willing to pay, all right, anyway. Yeah, so what I'm talking about is what I see is there's a lot of conversations happening around this, but nobody is using any logic into it, meaning there is no structure in a way how you can actually apply something into our system and see how to make it happen. Unfortunately, or you know, fortunately there's a huge community. Human mind is not something that is restricted to agile software or this particular room. Every other organization, everybody is working on that, and we have huge resources. There are a lot of people, a lot of scientific research being done on human mind and how it works, and a lot of tools are available today. So you guys are aware of the tools from neuro-linguistic programs? Sorry, sorry? What is, you use this wonderful, yeah, sounds good. So you know, so what I'm trying to understand is that a very, mostly when you hear people talk about how are you gonna do with these aspects that we talk about, we often talk in a very generic way. I understand it is very generic, but what next? How long will we talk things in a very generic way and what is the progress? We as a community, we have been talking about self-organizing teams for like decades now, like couple of decades I would say, but what have you done in this direction? When you talk about programming, we have like solid practices, and we talk about management practices. Again, we have solid practices. When you talk about human angle, it is always very subjective. It's always left to the team. It is always left to the manager. I understand that's the way it is, but what are the tools we are talking about? So my biggest concern is this. In fact, the entire talk, what I wanna do is, I just wanna just explore on this a bit and then introduce few tools that I use and then basically have a discussion around if you guys can use that as well. So what are the possible reasons? I mean, this is like something I've like heard a million times, like why people really don't work on aspects like this. The first one, there are no tangible immediate results and then the second one, there is a lot of fear of confrontation. Is that right? There's a lot of fear of confrontation because interestingly, every time I talk to my team members, they have a problem, there is a conflict. If there is an issue, what they tell me is, it's not like they don't wanna solve the issue. They really wanna solve the issue, but they really, really scared that. How will they confront the person? What if I'm gonna hurt the person with all good intentions? And that's where it comes from. It's way too complex and a lot of social conditioning. Let's say culturally we have been told to do certain things. Culturally we have been told that, okay, this is good and this is bad. And a lot of these things get into place when we are actually working on our teams. Is it true? You guys have an agreement. I would like to see if there is an agreement on this. A quick show of hands. All right, so rest all you have, you don't have these problems. Sorry, hmm, I'll give you an example. Like let's say, you know what? Like say, for instance, I was, yesterday I was doing this workshop where somebody was talking about, what will you do if someone is talking on your back? That is a symptom, that is a problem that you're seeing in your team. What are the ways you can avoid it? Or what are the ways you can find a solution? Give me some quick examples. If someone is talking behind your back, what will you do? Just ignore, wonderful, what is? In primitive behavior, just to give the scientific context, have you read Carl Sagan, anyone here? Carl Sagan's book. So he talks about something called as R Complex. Ignoring is a way of, it's one of the very primitive behaviors which we actually adopt when we do it. But let's see, anyway, what is, what is? We ignore it, then what does we do? Huh, sorry? Talk to them one on one, what will you tell them in your one on one? This is whatever, that's wonderful. This was one answer that I was looking for from most people, but most of them what they told me was, it is not okay because the other person may not feel right about it. Because you know, they might hurt, and because of that I'm not gonna tell them directly, but what I'll do is I'll just take them out and we'll have it enough. So that you know, we don't talk about it, but it still exists between us. So that's what I mean by social conditioning and also a lot of things about elders. If someone is elder to me, if someone is older to me, it is always almost understood that the person is right. So even if the person is gonna tell me something, we just acknowledge it, or max what we do is we just be passive aggressive and don't do it. But in the context, when the conversation happened, we very rarely do it, or rather very rarely we confront the person and see what we can do about it. So that's what I mean by social conditioning. So all these things put together is the individual process because each one of us have a particular coping up strategy, each one of us have a particular way we have to do. These things together would be your process by itself. So what I'm gonna do here, so I'm not gonna do, I'm just gonna take one simple item here, I'm just gonna introduce to one particular tool and this is what I use in a lot of the coaching practices along with other tools as well. I'll just introduce it to you, but I'm not saying this is the right way to do it, but this is a simple step to demystify this whole process to see if I can do something about it. So it's called as an okay, okay, coral. You guys have heard of it, anyone? No? Nobody? Okay. Okay, okay, coral comes from this particular school of thought called transfer. And your professor asked you what time it is, what will be your answer? Okay, all right, okay. And what are the answers? Sorry, but what was the question? So what should you say? The time, right? But why would you not say the time? Instead, why would you say traffic jam and sorry I'm late, why do you apologize there? Why? You know what you're looking for? These are nothing but the ulterior conversation. These are nothing but the ulterior motives that each one of us have. The beauty of it is we all understand that, but we don't talk about it. So sometimes while I'm even sitting on this room, I can almost see who is actually judging me, who is actually not judging me, we all get that. We all get that vibe. There are a lot of things that we understand from each other, but unfortunately we don't talk about it. So these tools, if you look at the scientific community, they really use it extensively and most of them are proven medically and it's been used across in various both. So I'm gonna talk about one of the tools like I said it's called as an okay, okay, coral. So what do I do now? So I'm not gonna wait, so I'm gonna continue. So okay, okay, coral by which what it means is basically a focused quadrant approach wherein I'm gonna take a life position for each personality, meaning I have like two positions, right? Like it's me versus the world. Is it like easily comprehensible, me versus the world, right? There are four possible options in which I might feel that I'm okay, meaning I'm a good person, but everyone sucks, okay? Or else I might feel that I'm really bad, I might feel very inferior, I'm like what kind of person I am? Look at everyone, they are so good, right? And what is the other possibility? I might think that okay, I'm a bad person, there is no hope for me, and look at everyone, there is no hope for them either. You know, I might think that everyone is bad and I am bad and there's nothing progressive which is gonna happen. You know, remember when this whole 2012 thing happened when there was a possible apocalypse which was being spoken about? Everybody were like that. Most of these cynics are like the ones who say, okay, nothing will work in this world, you're gonna be doomed, right? And what is the other possibility? It's like I'm okay, meaning I think I'm a good person and I also think you are a good person. Fair enough, so everybody understand these four models? Right, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna run you through, I'm not sure if you guys have read the description, I'm gonna talk about five characters, but first I'm gonna talk about the four characters and then the fifth character. So the first one is, as you can see, the first model that explained this in Cell Engineers where I feel that I'm okay, but everyone sucks. And I have my distressed damsel wherein I feel that I'm not okay, but others are okay. And where I have this another one which is perennial cynic and I'm not okay and you are not okay, things that basically everyone sucks. It's as simple as that. And what is the last one? It's a pragmatic hurdle which is I'm okay and you are okay. So you guys are with me, all of you, okay? All right, I just wanna do a quick study, but I'll do that later. So what I'm gonna do right now is we're gonna look at each of these personality type. Like I said, I'm not judging. Please don't think I'm judging people here. But what I'm gonna do is there are certain qualities which is generally attributed to each of these characters. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk about five things. I think I'm gonna talk about the quality, meaning what are the common qualities of these people. I'm gonna talk about themes. What do I mean by theme is everyone has a life theme? Like say, I wanna be happy. I wanna be a millennial. That'll be my theme. Likewise, I'm gonna talk about the themes for those individuals and I'm gonna talk about payoffs. You understand what a payoff is? Like what do I get? There is always a favorite emotion that all of us have. Like say for instance, what is your favorite emotion? Smile, okay, happiness, okay. Indifferent, okay, all right, what about you? Sorry, excitement. Is there anyone in the room who likes to cry, who likes to be sad? Nobody, are you sure? There are a lot of people who actually like to cry, meaning it is like a favorite position, meaning what they do is, it's almost called as a self-fulfilling profit. You like to cry? Oh, good, thank you, thanks for saying that. Even I have this tendency sometimes. I like to be in a very gloomy phase, very depressed phase where I can write poems. I feel that way. So anyway, so what I'm trying to talk about is you have this self-fulfilling prophecies. We just create some, we just create our surroundings in such a way that it feeds my intention. I just modify certain things, but it takes a lot of effort to actually look through it and then work on it. And this is what we have to start doing if you're really looking at making a team which has to be self-organizing or which has to be productive. Forget even these terminologies because today it's going to be agile and tomorrow it's going to be something else, but these are models which will be there whatsoever, both for professional and personal life. So payoffs is going to be about those emotions and then strategies. I'm going to tell you my strategies. Please don't jump on me if there's been any wrong strategies. You could be right. I'm not even going to have a debate on that. And the last one I'm going to talk about is tools, but unfortunately it's not a workshop so I'm not going to dwell much on the tools, but I will tell you a few tools which you guys can Google for and understand more about it. So you guys are with me? All of you? Yes, cool. So let's go on with the characters now. I'm going to make it this way. Each character I want you guys to make a guess. The first one is Insul and Genius where the person thinks that I'm okay and others are not okay. What are the possible qualities of these people? What do you think? Yes? Arrogant, okay, yes. Aggressive, yes. Self. Too much of self-confidence, which we call it as over-confidence. That's a better word, yes. Over-confident, anything else, guys? Sorry? Vanity, absolutely. Oh, that's a nice word. I should have used that. Anyway, so some of the qualities you see is over-confidence. There's always this air about know-it-all. You know, I know better than what you do. You better be in your place, right? And what is this? Do not listen. They're very rarely listened because they're already so full. Their cup is so full. They feel that, okay, fine. I know what I'm doing, so you better be there. And what is the last one? The last one is dominant. There could be more qualities as well, like some of you have said, which is understandable. So now let's see what is their theme. The basic theme in life is to get rid of. You know what get rid of means? Basically, get rid of something or someone. I don't care. I decide what has to be done. And what is their favorite emotion? They are these angry young men who are generally very furious, who are very burnt up. This team sucks. I don't like to work in this team. These are the kind of people that I'm talking about. So now, what do you think we can do with them? Your strategy, what do you think we can do with them? What would you do if you have a team member like this or if you're working with someone who's like this? What are your strategies? So I have a small request. Is it fine if I request you guys at the back to come in the front? You guys can say no, it's totally fine, but yeah. All right, so what will be your strategy? Let's say if you have to deal with these people, what will be your strategy? What will you do? Yes? So basically you just isolate them, which is their life strategy to get rid of. So what you are doing, you're creating a prophecy for them. You're letting them achieve what they want. So will it make, be a change? No, yeah, what else? What are the strategies? Sorry? Make them accountable, they'll happily do it because they are the know-it-all, right? So they'll happily do it in the process? Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Already they think that everybody in their team sucks, right? And if you give them the accountability and make them in the top slot and say, hey, please go ahead, you're creating hit law. People's accountability for people's happiness, all right? Okay? Give them something they know about, okay? They don't know about. It's very interesting guys, you guys are giving me options but the point that I'm trying to drive off this, each of these options has a consequence. So in fact, the whole talk, what I wanna focus on is, this is what I hear, because these are the words that we are really doing on ground when we are coaching the team, this is what we are doing. When we talk to the community, I don't hear so many things like that. I heard someone say this, he's very happy about that. But generally there is a lot of very, there is some very generic solutions. Let's say if someone is gonna tell me, give them responsibility for people part, there is a consequence to it, right? There has to be a consequence rather. So what happened? So there are theories about it. So why start from the wheel again? There are amazing theories that you could use. So that's all I'm talking about. But anyway, let's get on with it. So some of the strategies that I would recommend or what I use is, the first thing is if you are a coach and if you're anybody who has to work with them, first get their trust and respect. If they don't trust you, or if they don't respect you, there is no way you're gonna make this transition because they're already looking at you as some low being. So how do we do this? Usually knowledge works and especially if you're a coach or if you're a consultant, don't go and show off, but try to make the person understand that I'm as good as you. Try to have that pure level of understanding and be assertive. Being assertive is very important because what happens is, generally these people are very dominant. So like I said, we also have some life processes, right? We also have something to deal with and it's very easy for us to succumb to it. Do you say three times, four times and if the person still clings onto it and you say, okay, fine. You just do what you wanna have to do. Especially if the person is a senior person, especially if the person is a manager or someone who is in a very high position, we may not really confront them. It's not even confrontation, it's being assertive. You understand what I mean by being assertive, it's very, very important. So what is the third one? And help them to see the value in their peers. So especially when you're gonna give them something like people responsibility, they will start seeing value in their work because I believe everyone has something to offer in the table. It's never like one person is better than other person is not good. So this is one of the personality types and this is one of the two of the strategies. So any questions on this? No? All right, cool. So I'm gonna talk about the tools quickly. So what are the tools we can use for these kind of people? So some of the tools that I use is, there's something called as a two-chair technique. So I would request you to look at my other presentation because I've spoken about it in the earlier slide. So what we exactly do in a two-chair technique is we kind of simulate an environment where the two entities, two conflicting personalities have a conversation and then they try to resolve it. This is a very, very valid tool or a very effective tool to create change in your teams. So do read about it. It's a topic by itself. So I'm not gonna dwell about it, but please do read about it. It's very interesting, but use it with caution and know how to use it. There are a lot of techniques to it. You can always write to me. I can help you out if you want. So what are the other techniques? This is very simple, professional and psychological contract. I think I've spoken about it in the other conference as well. So what I mean by contracts is make some working agreements with them. Professional contracts are very simple. We know like, okay, you are a manager. You're supposed to do this. You're a team member. You're supposed to do this. All this we understand. But what you have to also talk to them about is psychological contract. By which what I mean is, are you okay to do this? Are you willing to do this? If not, okay, indulge in a conversation. And all these things don't make it as a very generic thing. Have pointers, have tables, write it down and see what it is. And that really goes a long way. You guys are with me? All of you? One-on-ones and interventions. How many of you do interventions here? You know what an intervention is? One-on-ones, yes, I understand because the organization demands that you have one-on-ones with your team members and we all do it. But what about interventions? You understand interventions? Sorry? It is? You try to break something, okay? What is? Yes? Yes, yes. It could be that. But what I mean in this context is, so let's say some people have opinions, people have views in a lot of things. You know, especially in a scrum forum, in an agile forum, they have a lot of meetings and a lot of ceremonies. If you notice that something is not okay, intervene and make a point right there. Don't wait for things to happen because it's gonna take a long time. But what I mean is, some of these things should be embedded in the team and it will not happen as a separate process. You should start working very closely with your teams and if you notice something, talk to them and tell it to them politely the way it is assertive. That's what I mean by intervention. And the next one is sandwich strokes. How many of you give sandwich strokes here? You understand what a sandwich stroke is? Positive or negative? You know, when I give a feedback, if I know the guy sucks, I really don't tell him that, okay, you're really bad. But what I tell him is, okay, you're bad, but you have these, these, these qualities as well. So this really helps. So that way, the common, what do I say? The feedback is also given at the same time you've made a point. One of the challenges with sandwich strokes, which I've noticed, I'm sure some of you might have seen as well as, sometimes it gets diluted in the name of giving a lot of positive things which is dilute the negative aspect. You know what I mean? So be aware of your individual process. That's what I mean by individual process because let's say if I'm a nice guy, so can I take your example and your name? Pavan, okay? So let's say Pavan is a very nice guy and I'm this very aggressive person, all right? If Pavan is gonna have a conversation, he wants to tell me that you're being very aggressive and dominant, please slow down. If Pavan comes and tells me something saying, hey, these are the things, but you also have these qualities. You are knowledgeable, you are this, you are that, and all that. What I'm gonna pick up is that and not the first one. You know, because this is what I want to hear. So always make sure every time you give a sandwich stroke, you just give it the way the person understands it's at work. So what is the last one? Trust exercise and egogram. So trust exercise is very simple. So this is very confrontational, but it really goes a long way with the team members. I just ask them on a count of, on the scale of one to 10, how much you trust me, okay? How much do you trust me? Give me a number. Zero, cool, yes. Sorry? Two, three, two or three? Three, okay, all right, okay. You trust me? Give me a number. But give me a number, it's okay. One, okay? Eight, all right, cool, right? See, in the individual room, you know, in this particular room, I've met you guys just like about 20 minutes ago, and we all met at the same time. We have been having conversations, but different people are giving different numbers, right? How does that happen? I'm not communicating to you the same way, you know, like even though I'm speaking the same words, even though I'm the same person, each one of you are perceiving me differently, right? So it's very, very important aspect of human behavior. Ask this question to your team members. Trust me, they'll be uncomfortable. It really, really goes a long way because next time when you have conversations with them, they start believing because this is like bringing the ulterior out in open. The moment you start doing it, the amount of trust they have on you multiplies. So if you have to be a change agent, it really, really helps. You guys are with me? All of you? So EgoGram again, I'm not gonna explain because it's a topic by itself. Basically the idea is it's like histogram. So you have like a lot of attributes within us. We have like parent, adult, and child. Within parent, you have critical parent, then you have nourishing parent, then you have rebellious child, and then you have compliant child, and then adult, a lot of these things. So what I basically do is I make the team members sit and draw a histogram of each of their behaviors. What do they think they are? It starts from there and it start a conversation. It really helps the team members talk about their ulteriors out in open. Okay, but read about it. Especially EgoGram and Touche technique, I recommend. It requires some reading because there are techniques to it. There's a specific way in which we have to do it. Other things are okay. You might as well try it. I'll spend some time on this slide because most of these tools are gonna be repetitive. So I'm gonna quickly run through the next set of slides. Any questions on this? Nothing? I'll move on. All right, so let's quickly do the next one. Distressed Dancer, so which is like, I'm not okay and you are okay. What do you think their qualities are? Sorry? Actually, it's a very interesting thing. Even I thought of introvert, but when I had a supervision with a lot of my people, so introvert, extrovert, or an ambivert is just a communication model. You know, I can be aggressive and still be an introvert. You know what I mean? So introverts are not technically this kind of people. What is the other one? Insecure, yes? Inferiority complex, yeah? Lack of confidence is almost like the opposite of the other one, right? They're overconfident, they're like the other side. What is, what are the quality? Little bit submissive? Pessimistic? No. Optimistic? Okay, no. Pessimistic and optimistic is a different quadrant altogether. So let's see what are the qualities now. So generally they are very submissive, subservient, silent and not confident. I mean silent, what I mean is not necessarily introvert, but they don't really open up and speak. You know, you might have attended a lot of meetings, retrospectives, DSM, there are always one or two people who are always silent. It's not that, I mean many times it could be the other way around also, but these are one of the common attributes, right? So now let's see what is their theme. What do you think their theme would be? The theme is difficult to guess, but maybe tell me your quality. What will be their quality? What will be their favorite feeling? Like we saw of angry young man was the feeling for the other person, sorry? What is sadness, okay? Something close, yes? Sorry? Poor me, absolutely, yeah, it's poor me. And it's like, really they get embarrassed, they're always in a constant state of embarrassment. Who am I, you know? Like everybody is good, I'm like this soul who's fit for nothing. That's how they feel about themselves. So what do we do with these kind of people? So some of the strategies that I use is I give them a lot of positive strokes. You understand what a positive stroke is? Encouragement and motivation and all, blah, blah, blah. But you know what? The best thing about motivation is it doesn't happen with words. It really doesn't happen with words. It has to, they have to really feel it. And for that to happen, you have to really feel that they are good enough or something and you have to give the compliment. The moment you give them fake compliments, your compliments will go for a toss. Nobody would believe what you're saying, right? So I'll give you an example. I used to work for this organization. There used to be like this HR. You know how the HRs are supposed to be, right? They're supposed to be very nice and good to human people and like beings like me, the ones who is working. So all she wanted to do was, she wanted me to compare for one of her events, right? So she comes and tells me, you know what, Karthik, I think you are really good at what you're doing and you have to compare this particular show. Have anyone told you that you speak like Amitabh Bachchan? There you go. So the next time she's gonna tell me I'm good, I'm like, yeah, right. That's exactly what I would think. So always be very careful about the compliment that you choose. Appropriate words always go a long way. Be supportive. And the next one is be compassionate and be strong. What does that mean? Any idea? Be compassionate and be strong. So by compassion, yeah, we understand, we have to be nice to another human being, all Adira, all that stuff. But at the same time, be sure about what is your goal. You know, there is an organization goal. There is something that you have to achieve. So be compassionate, be nice to the person. At the same time, make sure that work is done, right? And what is the last one? This is very important. Give them responsibility and allow mistakes. See, one of the things that this kind of, generally people who are submissive or inferior, what they need is, they need permission to make mistakes. So how many of you have permission to make mistakes here? How many of you have permission to make mistakes here? In your life, in your work, in general? We are at an agile conference, right? All right, okay, I'm not talking about agile anyway. Cool, so what happened to the others? You don't have permission? You don't have permission to make mistakes? But do you think you need permission to make mistakes? That's a question. Do you need permission? Absolutely, yes. No permission required? Yes, all right, cool. So what I was driving at was, if you just look at any happiness index, you know this Norway and most of these countries are very high at the happiness index, if you just look keenly, what is the difference? What is the significant difference even between agile and waterfall? I'm not saying waterfall is bad or whatever, but the difference is, happiness is directly proportional to the amount of choice you have. You know what I mean? Today, I may not make a mistake, but for me to know that I have a choice, I have a choice to make a mistake, I can choose, I can choose if I have to do this, that gives you a lot of happiness. Even in this very confident, if I had told you, so this is my talk, you guys get into the talk and I'm gonna lock all the rooms, what happens? Even though I'm gonna give you whatever it is, you guys will start hating me, right? So what is the difference here? So choice is very, very important. In fact, not just for this personality, but for everyone. So when you actually coach your teams, bring out these value systems and talk to them about it, it really goes long way. So be compassionate and strong, give responsibility and allow mistakes. Again, talking about the tools itself, like I said, two-chair, professional, psychological, contract, one-on-ones and interventions, positive strokes and egogram, all right? So I'll move on to the next slide. Everyone, all right? So what about this one, perennial cynic? I'm not okay, you're not okay, which basically means everyone sucks, right? So tell me what are the qualities? Careless, you think they're careless? Okay, yes? Anyone? Pessimistic, absolutely. They're basically pessimistic that it reaches to a level that they think nothing works, right? What else? Negative? This satisfied, yes, what else? How do you spot these people? Do you know an easy way to spot these people? Sorry? They're cribbing all the time, absolutely, yes. The crew was then? Sorry? Always criticized. If you notice their conversations, right, it always starts with, yes, I would like to do that, but, you know, they'll constantly, yes, but, you know, like if you give them any options, they would constantly, yes, but, basically for them, options doesn't exist in this world, you know, everything is like ruthless. So let's talk about what are the qualities? Cynical, regressive, passive, aggressive and futile, but trust me, guys, this is one of the difficult quadrants to work on, especially if you have a team member who belongs to this quadrant. In my experience, I've seen that this is the most toughest quadrant to work on, because they don't have any value for their self, not for others. So you have to really build that, and it takes a long time, but trust me, it's worth the effort, right? What is? Now, what will be their payoff? Their payoff is humiliated, meaning they always like to feel humiliated all the time. And what about the strategies? The strategies are, here it's very important, because for them, it's all about nothing works, right? So everything is very great. So if you're gonna talk to them about philosophy, if you're gonna talk to tell them that, okay, we all should work as a team, if you're gonna give them all mumbo jumbo, they will not listen to you. You have to be very logical with them, to the point, very directive, and tell them what has to be done. That's what I mean by, or meaning when I say what has to be done, involve them in the conversation, but be very clear about what has to be done, right? Be logical, be solution focused, and talk about options, and then help them pick unavailable options. This is very, very crucial. Any other strategy? No? All right, so let's go to the tools. Again, it's gonna be similar tools, but there is something interesting here which I would like to highlight. So if you just look at it in the earlier technique that I was talking about, I basically spoke about professional and psychological contract, but in this case, I'm also adding an administrative contract, because you have to be very specific about what you have to do. Even if you're talking about, I'll give you an example. So I had a person in my team where there was a conflicting situation. So he was constantly complaining about this other person, and of course, as with any conflict, it goes only to the manager. So this person was not really willing to have a conversation with this person, because he thinks that's not the right way to do. But how do I contract with them? What I do is, I just don't tell them, with others I would have said them, like please go talk to them. But with this person, I will ask them, when will you talk to them? What time set up a meeting? You see the difference? You see the difference? No, yes? Yes? It's very, very important because unless you have an administrative contract with them, it's very difficult for you to actually get them to do something, because basically what do they think? Everyone sucks, right? Now let's come to the last personality, which is pragmatic adult, and I'm okay, you're okay. What do you think they are? Any idea? Any thoughts? Sorry? The kind who is assertive, yes? Matured, yes? Oh, that's a very abusive term. I don't even know what matured is. I really don't know, trust me. And what is being practical, yes? High EQ, emotional quotient, what about IQ? Doesn't matter, okay? So will you take an employee, if he says, okay, I'm high on EQ, but I'm so dumb? Will you give him a job? All right, good to hear that. Okay, what else? Balanced, okay, well balanced, okay? Anything else? All right, so let's look at the qualities, and very positive, and they're very open to ideas. This is something which is the crux of it, because I believe that I'm okay, and others are also okay, which means that there are ideas, there are discussions, there are conversations. And they're very assertive, they're very forward-looking, very solution-oriented, non-judgmental, by which what I mean is, just because I'm gonna say something, they wouldn't judge me for that. They wouldn't judge my intelligence based on that. And they're active listeners, very important quality, and then they act on here and now. You understand what is here and now? You understand what is here and now? In the current, I'll give you an example. Let's say, if there was a situation in the project where this particular person was not able to do something today because he has an emergency at work, or I'm sorry, an emergency at home, right? So if he's gonna go and ask another person, can you do my work instead of me? His response has to be purely based on what the current situation is, not based on what happened in the past. When I asked you in the past, you didn't do me, so I'm not gonna do for you today. So that is nothing, anything but here and now. But here and now what I mean is, what is the situation, who is the best person to do it, and the correct person to do it? That's it, so that's what I mean by here and now. So here, if you look at the team, the team is gonna be get on with and the payoff is gonna be joyful and jubilant. So thinking about it, this is a very healthy space to be in, isn't it? You guys agree? This is a very healthy space to be in and we all want to be there and there are people who are there as well, right? So these are the four characters that I wanna talk about. Any questions on these characters? There's only one more character left, yes? Absolutely. So can I park that question for a second? Because the next slide is gonna talk about that. I'll just get back to that. But before that, can you guys get up for a second? All of you? So this is from my own study because I'm curious. So I just wanna see, you have understood four kind of people, right? Like there are like four kind of people that you are working with, right? So I wanna see today, in your organization, in your teams, if there is a troublemaker, I'm gonna take away the pragmatic order because that is supposed to be good. I'm gonna take over three other characters. I wanna see if there is a trouble in your team, think about that person and see where will you place him or her in the quadrant. If let's say, if the trouble is because of insolent genius, I want you to sit down, like when I call it out, likewise, yeah? You get it, right? Okay, let's go with one quadrant after the other. So what about insolent genius? Is it the kind of people that you have trouble with in your organization right now? How many people? Yeah, very few, okay? You can sit down. You can sit down. Now distress damsel. The ones who need attention. All right. Okay, now, so which means, most of us are dealing with perineal cynic, right? There's a very positive space to be in, right? Very nice, good luck to you. All right, so let's go on to the, good luck to the community as well. So let's go to the next part. So like you rightly pointed it out, it's not about a person saying, okay, this is what you are. It's never like a person is always perineally cynic, but there is always a position which is very dominant. You know, there are other attributes like, we all move from different life positions all the time. All of us have all parts of it, all elements of it. It's not even like this is good and this is bad. All of us have that, but there is a dominant quality which dictates how our life has to be. And we all have a self-fulfilling prophecy and we try to satisfy that with those characters. So what we do, what we actually do is, when I say I'm gonna coach with the teams, when I use this tool with my teams, what I actually do is, I try to see how to bring them to the adult state. Bringing them to the adult state is very easy for me. Why? Because you should be in an adult state if you have to bring your team members in an adult state. You have to be very aware of what processes are happening to you. Let's say for example, I'm doing the trust exercise. You remember the one I was talking about? I go and ask the team member, okay, rate me on trust. It's a very vulnerable position. You understand that, right? I'm just asking someone to rate me on the trust quotient. If someone tells me, okay, minus five, how would I rate my manager? And if my manager is gonna tell me something, and I feel that, okay, my manager is judging me, okay? If I feel that something is not okay about the way how he is communicating with me, ask it out and open. And this is a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't, we don't do it. So this is what I'm trying to understand when we talk about I'm gonna build team spirit. I'm gonna increase the morale in the team. How are we doing it in your organization? Because we are talking on the surface. We're barely scratching the surface. We're really not doing any deep dive there and seeing what it is. So I'm gonna stop with this. This is a thought. What is the fifth character I'm talking about? So when we are actually discussing all these models, the first thing that comes to our mind is the other person who is sitting that side. You know, the person whom we attribute these characters to maybe a manager, maybe a team member, maybe a colleague or whoever it is. But what is important is, you guys attended Diana's Keynote, right? So she's talking something about model which was very fascinating. Of which goes like, when you actually start working on a model, you realize that the model will start teaching you many things about yourself. When you start applying these models in your team, when you start seeing what is happening, when you start your awareness, what happens is you start realizing where you are. You know, that is a part of self-realization. The moment you start the journey, everything will fall in place. Be a coach or be a manager or be anyone who's involved in people processes. It goes a long way. So what are the tools that people could use? You know, it's very simple. It's like most of the tools that I spoke about, you guys can obviously use it. And the other tools that you guys can use is, you can use journal as well as supervision. Yeah? I thought the session is at 30, right? Your session is at 30. I'll finish it before that. So mine was started late, actually. Yeah. So let me close with this. So what I wanna say is, be fearless. You know, start this process, start this journey. Because unless we as a community start doing it, if we just talk about things in a very generic fashion, saying, I'm gonna build Team Morale, I'm gonna make my team self-organizing, it's really not gonna work that way. Start working on some of these tools. It's scientifically proven tools. You don't even have to go and use something which is not available for others. Most of them are online and easy to use. So we really recommend that, start using it, you will see one does. If I have to quickly translate what is written over there, it roughly translates to a similar is fearless and Anakannani hero is like, I'm the hero for myself. I'm my hero, that's what it translates to. That's pretty much, so I'm just done. So if you have any questions I'll just take. I think I have like a couple of minutes left before the next speaker so we can just wrap it up. Any questions? All right, so thank you so much. So please do use these tools. I would like to know if you have some experiences on that. Thank you.