2023: My experiments with learning

Posted by Santh

I take immense pride in reading books as a source of knowledge, started with fiction during my student days and switched to anthropology, technology, science and leadership during the last twenty years. I usually list down the books I enjoyed reading during a year as blogpost but did not do it last year as I did not read many books in 2022. The same trend continued in 2023 albeit for additional reasons. I will list out these reasons intertwined with my experiments and conclude with my learnings through this process.

  1. Time at work: During these last couple of years, I enjoyed spending a lot more time than usual at work. I addressed meaningful challenges by applying my past learnings from books and deep thinking aided by coaching that I covered in another blogpost. These opportunities for hands-on learning have been super satisfying, far greater than any book can offer.
  2. Audible: Due to a couple of eye problems that I was trying to figure out root cause, I subscribed to Audible to check if listening to books can be an effective alternative. I felt good about this option after listening to “Atomic Habits” but did not work for two subsequent books, so gave it up for now. I usually read books before going to sleep and keep aside my book or kindle when I can longer focus on content. But with audible, I did not know when I stopped listening and lose track of the book easily.
  3. OTT Platforms: The documentaries available over YouTube, CuriosityStream, Netflix and other OTT platforms provide latest and crisp content that are quite effective to acquire quick knowledge at a high level. I have explored these options for more than 5 years but have significantly increased reliance on them. In fact, some of the book references were from here.
  4. Difficulty with finding high quality books of interest: Finally, I am quite picky when it comes to books and go through multiple reviews before starting to read one. Having read most of the classics and contemporary best books in my areas of interest over the last twenty years, finding new ones is difficult. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the numerous awesome authors who spend their lifetime writing books. Just that I am a slow reader who takes almost a month for a 300-page book with limited time at my disposal. With other compelling options to acquire knowledge having emerged over the last decade, I need to pick the best horses for courses so that I don’t become a dinosaur.

The books I read over the years have helped me become who I am today and am sure they will continue to play a key role in shaping me in future too. There were times in the past when I felt a sense of accumulating learning debt when I don’t read books for a few months at a stretch. However, I did not feel that way during the last couple of years due to my experiments covered above. Having said that, I want to read at least five books in 2024 to check what I missed during the last couple of years and will start the new year by compiling my reading list!

Coaching

Posted by Santh

I have learnt a lot from people, experiences, books and online resources during my 25-year professional career. For the first time, I had the good fortune of formal coaching interventions during 2023 and benefited from three different coaches. All of them helped me understand my strengths and improvement opportunities to come up with a credible development plan.

I am not a certified coach, so with this call out, let me start with my personal perspective on who can be a coach. It should be a leader who is accomplished in an area that we passionately respect, one we consider role model and derive inspiration from. A coach is not a teacher or manager who can instruct on what we should do. Rather, a coach helps in discovering ourself by asking questions that enables introspection and offers possible solutions when asked, leaving the decision choice to us. Most importantly, a coach should be one we can fully trust to keep conversations confidential.

All my three coaches had distinct approaches and each one of them helped me immensely in different ways. One common factor was rich experience that I have learnt from. It is important for us to understand our coach and figure out how to leverage the opportunity. The rest of the blogpost covers how I accomplished it.

Knowing each other: I mentioned trust as an important factor in a coaching relationship and we cannot trust strangers. So, it is important to start the engagement by knowing each other. In my case, I already trusted one of my internal coaches and an informal breakfast conversation with the other covered this part. While we are likely to know any internal coaches to some extent, I did some research on my external coach before the first conversation. This helped me strike a good chord during the first conversation and build trust.

Agree on expectations: Once the “knowing” part is complete, the first meeting should also cover setting ground rules and expectations. It is important to recognize that the coachee is the primary benefactor and should drive the engagement.

Identify a priority to focus on: Two of my coaches asked me questions and pretty much took control of the engagement, which made it easy for me. I still had to follow-up on discussion points and demonstrate that I am serious about learning from them for self-improvement. While there are many themes and topics that might be of interest for coaching engagement, I focused on one or two at a time, delved deep over multiple conversations before moving on to others. It is ideal to end the first meeting with the priority theme to start with.

Go well-prepared: This is possibly the most important part of the process to benefit from the engagement. The coachee should diligently follow-up on any previous discussions and start every meeting with those updates followed by listing down items wish to be covered.

Speak about our fears and weakness: My best learnings were when my coach acted as a mirror reflecting my weaknesses and suggested solutions from their experiences. When we stand in front of a mirror with make-up, we cannot diagnose imperfections accurately and the results from any follow-up actions will not be effective. The whole point of trust is to be able to confide with our vulnerabilities without concerns of being compromised.

Internalize learnings, act with commitment, and introspect to recognize changes: Coaching conversations and like leadership development programs. Many go into those programs expecting magical transformation and growth overnight, and get disappointed after a few months when they realize nothing much has changed. We should understand these interventions are a source of new ideas that we need to internalize and consciously practice over long periods before expecting results. Due to slow and incremental changes, we might not even notice them ourselves but will be good to introspect regularly to recognize progress. It is like looking at our own pictures from several years back that usually leave us admiring either our present or the past.

Share progress made: I consciously share with my coaches success stories resulting from coaching engagements that made me proud and further reinforced changed behaviors. I believe this will also be an encouragement to the coach as leaders love to hear about positive difference they made to others!

Logical closure: You can’t be stuck on the same theme or topic forever. If that happens, the coaching engagement is not really meeting the objective. I try to conclude a theme with an agreement on future course of action and move to the next one. The cycle starts again with the next priority theme.

Once again, these are just my perspectives on coaching based on my experiences so far and might differ from what coaching manual says. As I learn further, will update this post with any changes. In conclusion, want to thank my coaches and my leadership who gave me this opportunity and this blogpost is a tribute for their help to become a better version of myself!