BullzI Inc.

Author: Sanjeev Roy

  • Leading with Empathy

    Program Introduction 

    Why Empathy?

    For the longest time, we were told, the workplace has no place for feelings! And that all work was transactional – merely a “give and take”!

    The truth, however,  is that even in the workplace we have to work with people. And people, after all, think, feel, have hopes & worries & troubles. Only with empathy can a leader navigate uncertainties abound the workplace.

    If the past year has taught us anything, it is that empathy, more than any other virtue, helps keep things together through crises – it helps to build confidence and forge a common path. Empathy makes people feel valued and respected – and it allows them to show up in unexpected ways!. 

    In the midst of uncertain times, empathy helps people make genuine connections and rally behind a shared purpose. 

    Be an empathetic leader! – the business gurus tell us – but how to do that day in and day out remains unclear. If questions around how to be a more empathetic leader have troubled you, then this program is for you. 

    What Will You Walk Away With?

    In this two-part program, we focus on how empathy can help you become a leader who inspires and motivates instead of one who demands and orders! 

    We talk about what empathy at the workplace is and what it isn’t, and practical insights and tools to help you take an empathetic approach in your everyday work lives.

      • The program consists of 2 sessions of 2.5 hours each to help leaders understand the power of empathy and how to bring more of it into their everyday lives 
      • We use timeless wisdom on empathy and modern research on leadership as well as our own proprietary tools to teach leaders how to make use of the power of empathetic connections to create a more harmonious and purpose-driven world. 
      • We employ a mix of interactive methodologies including individual reflection, group dialogue and role-play to help participants absorb the contents more effectively

    Who Is This Program For?

    This program will be helpful for anyone who has to lead a team; whether it’s a big team or a smaller one and, whether they are working in a giant corporate or working in a new-age startup. It is designed to help participants become more mindful leaders through thoughtful action.

    Previous participants have included leaders working in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations of varied backgrounds.

    What Are The Previous Participants Saying?

    Here’s what a first-time manager in the Public Policy and Advocacy domain had to say about the program: 

    “Not only has it helped me connect better with my team; understand things from their perspective which is often overlooked when we are caught up in work, but it has also allowed me to introduce certain tools to help myself grow as a (empathetic) leader.”

    Here is what another mid-level Program Manager in a women’s advocacy not-for-profit had to say about her experience:

    “I enjoyed the experience of going through the process of learning, unlearning, and re-learning through self-reflection (during the sessions). The training reassured me about certain aspects of my leadership – empathy in action, the importance of connecting and developing trust among teammates & colleagues. I was happy to reflect on not just how I see myself as a leader but also how others around me experience my leadership.”

    And, here is what an Associate Vice President with more than 15 years of experience in the Marketing and Communications domain had to say about the program:

    “This is a timely program for all of us who’ve had to lead teams/people in the present circumstances. I found it full of practical insights and practices to help me become more empathetic. Virtual training can be a drag but these sessions were very engaging. I would recommend it for all leaders.”

    About Bullzi

    At Bullzi, we are dedicated to making organizations and their leaders live a larger purpose. By tapping into their true potential. Our proprietary learning and development tools and processes have been crafted over a decade of working with some of the finest organizations and business leaders. We execute this purpose through our work in Organisation Development, Leadership Development, Executive Coaching and Career Counseling focused Search.

    Our ‘Check In’ programmes have been attended digitally by over 600 people in the Covid Era. Since March 2020 we have been running programmes and holding spaces, digitally including three full-house editions of the Connected Leadership Lab. Our pioneering work in OD combining Scenario Planning and Appreciative Inquiry to help organizations find their feet in the post-Covid19 world has just been rolled out.

    • Date & time: 10th and 12th February, 3:30-6 pm
    • Cost – INR. 3200/-+ 18% GST = INR. 3776/- per participant
    • Group Participant from the same Organisation:

         –  Up to 3 participants: INR. 3000/- + 18% GST = INR. 3540/- per participant

         –  4 participants or more: INR. 2750/- + 18% GST = INR. 3245/- per participant

    • Location – Virtual ( Zoom)

    For booking and any queries please call :-

    Sanjeev Ganguly – +91 9811741010

    Shipra Uppal – +91 9818611336

  • How companies can use an innovative approach to manage change – The Economic Times

    Change management has become an everyday reality, in the new paradigm. In this context, an innovative mix of the approaches of Scenario Planning and Appreciative Inquiry can enable organizations to predict, negotiate and manage change more effectively.

    Click the link here for the article

  • Should Organizations depriortize L&D during these times? – In peoplematters.in

    To read the blog, please click here

  • Business Coaching takes Centre Stage Amid Pandemic – Interview on Freepress Journal

     

    This is an interview that appeared yesterday of Freepress Journal.
    Change and transformation is when interventions yield the maximum result. 
    We are sitting in the eye of the huge storm that is underway and around us, most things are changing. As leaders, you have to deal with fairly new and evolving challenges constantly. A coach can help you personally and in thinking through business decisions.
    Here is hoping you have a mentor/coach/significant other who you can actively engage with.
     

  • Find you mojo – By Rethinking Success

    Alok Agrawal’s purpose lies in helping others find innovative solutions. (Ramesh Pathania)

     

    Mojo

    –      A quality that attracts people to you and makes you successful and full of energy: Cambridge Dictionary

    –      To be able to find something you like doing, and to do it with passion, zeal, energy and enthusiasm: Urban Dictionary

    For a few years now, I have been working with business and social leaders, young entrepreneurs, writers and artists and many others seeking to rediscover their mojo. The primary space for this work is Reflections, an offsite programme run at specific times of the year, usually in Uttarakhand. Many participants have benefitted and truly rediscovered their mojo.

    This is the story of one such person who benefited from being a part of Reflections.

    What does it take to effectively control diabetes when medication seemingly does not work?

    Alok Agrawal, an IIT and IIM alumnus, Group COO of one of the largest media companies in the country, asked himself this question as he stared at his Hb1ac report that showed a score of 9.8! The upper limit is 6.5, give or take a few decimal points. For the first time in his life he admitted to himself that something was missing and what he had done so far to beat his restlessness was not going to work anymore.

    Dream Run But….

    To explain a little, Alok’s career journey had been what most people dream of. Starting off in advertising, he made his way to the very top of a multi-national agency. The characteristic restlessness had already made an appearance and he tackled it in his own inimitable style of plunging into something bigger that earned him even bigger bucks and larger perks. He quit advertising to join as the CEO of a news channel and then went on to head a clutch of channels and multi-million dollar deals. However, did that dissipate his restlessness? No it didn’t. The dissatisfaction mounted.  

    In personal interactions he had begun to sound cynical and frustrated even though he continued to do well in his job. He missed the creativity and ideas driven work of advertising but had no desire to return. Once again Alok put his dissatisfaction down to the organisation and that job. Health, he argued, was a ‘personal’ problem – a family inheritance and his frustration was linked to his ‘professional’ issues with the organisation. Besides, the job did not allow him time to exercise or diet properly. He did what he had done so far – changed his job. This time the group was larger, had a reputation of being more professional and his job was bigger. After the first few months all the restlessness returned. One year later, he was staring at his 9.8 diabetes report and thinking how life and everything he had been doing seemed so incomplete.

    Alok finally admitted to himself that he had lost the drive and passion. To put it in a nutshell, he had lost his mojo.

    What Alok was experiencing was not a unique phenomenon. His diagnosis of the reasons for frustration, that it was about the job and that it had no connection with his personal or other self, is also a common misconception. I see it all the time in successful leaders. In Alok’s case he had not allowed himself to question what he really wanted to do with his life. The glitter of the 8-figure salary had blinded him to the fact that he had failed to move out of the paradigm of ‘success’ and find his real ‘Purpose’. His journey to a happier state of being, of enthusiasm, energy and spreading positivity started when he was willing to revisit that paradigm.

    The Unpacking at Reflections and Beyond

    It wasn’t easy but Alok, with a little help through the facilitated journey in Reflections , started the process of asking himself the tough questions of what really mattered and what he wanted to do. ‘Finding Purpose’ or ‘Finding your Mojo’ for most people is a difficult and messy process. There will be many false starts but each of those takes us closer to something that really gets our mojo going again. Alok quit his job and after a period of doing nothing started exploring. He became active on social media and soon became a popular blogger on various issues. That attracted many start-ups and businesses to him and he found himself in the role of a mentor. That was energising for him and in turn his mentees were touched by his positivity, energy and ideas. The interesting shift in his outlook was the move from thinking about ‘valuation’ and revenue to being of real service to people. He began finding joy in helping others find solutions.

    Finding his Mojo and Redefining Success

    Alok has now moved on to being a consultant who helps organisations and people think innovatively. He has married his love for ideas and creativity with a deep desire to help others unlock their creativity. And of course, he makes money from it too, not the multi eight figure as yet but enough to keep his mojo going.

    When I called him the other day to seek his permission to share his story, he mentioned a coincidence – he was sitting with his latest Hb1ac report and the score was 6.4! Purpose added to his prescription, had worked.

    I invited him for a cup of tea and he suggested we meet over something more toxic! Mojo, when it gets going is like that, magical, full of happy surprises and entirely diabetes-friendly.

    What is your mojo story? Share here and let it inspire those who are seeking it.

    Sanjeev Roy is the founder of Bullzi Inc. Amongst other things, he is a Coach and runs Reflections – a programme for leaders to reinvent, recharge and-re-energize themselves. By Finding the Best in themselves. 

    The next Reflections programme is scheduled between the 10th and 13th of April, 2019. Write in if you too want to find your mojo.

    An edited version of this article first appeared in the Mint on 22nd January, 2019

  • Six Ways To Grasp Post-Lockdown India – The Mint

    MintEpaper-080620

    Click here for the Article

  • What human-centric companies prescribe for post world – The Economic Times

    What human-centric companies prescribe for a post-Covid world – The Economic Times

  • Finding your mojo by continuously reinventing yourself

    For a few years now, I have been working with business and social leaders, young entrepreneurs, writers and artists and many others seeking to rediscover their mojo. The primary space for this work is Reflections, an offsite programme run at specific times of the year, usually in Uttarakhand. Many participants have benefitted and truly rediscovered their mojo.

    This is the story of one such person, Pritha Sen, who has been a part of Reflections, as a faculty.

    Mojo in the urban dictionary is the quality that fills us with energy, makes us more attractive to people and creates a virtuous cycle that makes us successful. It’s a bagful of invisible charms that one dips into to rejuvenate. When you find your Mojo, you are in that wonderful space where everything about you is in synch. You operate from a deep understanding of Self, follow your Passion and believe you are working towards your Purpose. A pretty tall order you may say and wonder whether it is possible at all. 

    Let me share with you an example of a person who has turned a lot of conventional wisdom on its head and has been exploring, finding and rediscovering her Mojo, each time in a different place, through the many years that I have had the pleasure of knowing her.

    A conventional start with a touch of empathy

    Pritha Sen (58) was a post grad in history who like many other educated women in the pre-liberalisation days became a school teacher. Students loved her, her classes were in demand, yet she found something missing. She decided to explore beyond and trained to teach children with special needs and achieved some firsts in that profession. Circumstances beyond her control put an end to that career but she was not dejected. Instead, quite serendipitously, she was into journalism, discovering much that was happening in the world. Empathetic and equity-driven, it was no surprise then that she made a huge success of an award-winning page she launched in on the social sector. That was when she decided to quit and join the development sector as a consultant specialising in documentation, evaluations and trainings for the social sector. Clients agreed that her work was top quality.

    Side steps and cross steps

    Travelling for work took her to the remotest corners of the country and she explored the history, culture and food (an abiding interest since childhood) of these places. Soon she found the next level of her work, one that is the current buzzword in the social sector lexicon –sustainable livelihoods. She looked closer and found a gold mine in local foods, their histories and age-old recipes that told her about the communities she worked with and the ignored indigenous wisdom on nutrition. She recognised the next important milestone in her life and plunged into it to become part of a movement that is sweeping the globe – returning to one’s roots and identity with healthy regional cuisine. 

    Writing on food developed as an aside and Pritha had soon built a reputation as an authority and food historian. Today, apart from working with everything else she has in the past, she has been one of the forces behind the resounding success of a restaurant brand in two of the most competitive food markets in the country. Recently, she was mightily thrilled about singing with a bluesgrass band from the US at a café in Kolkata.

    This may sound like the story of a confused person. If that were the case, Pritha would not have been able to create so many successes. There was hard work, making new connections and the difficult task of learning new skills involved every single time.

    Let’s unpack these a little more.

    If business as usual is not your thing, don’t be apologetic

    Pritha is truly dancing in her mojo when she sets up new challenges for herself. Not for her the task of dealing with managing and maintaining business as usual for too long. She gets restless. She understands and accepts this aspect of her personality. Combined with the need to be the best at what she does, she has to stretch every time to rebuild her knowledge and skills, drawing heavily on the learnings from her previous experiences. She cannot be one without the other to create better versions of herself each time. One that is rooted in the sum of her past and the addition of the new. We know many amongst us who get bored without fresh challenges but still remain glued to the old and therefore lose their mojo. They would be well advised to explore and find new challenges.

    Keep your interests alive

    Like many among us, Pritha has multiple interests. However, unlike most others, she has never allowed those interests to be buried for too long. Again a great example for all of us with varied interests. You never know where it could lead to.

    Equity is a deeply held belief for her. And she weaves that into almost everything she does. Like teaching children with special needs or bringing the social sector into focus in mainline media or hiring young talented cooks from small town who need backing to make it big, , Purpose is seamlessly built into all that she does.

    Pritha does not think of her life in the boxes that my unpacking here discusses. She lives it in the questions that she asks herself when she experiences a persistent flagging in her interest and in making those difficult choices. She keeps finding her mojo everytime she begins to lose it. You can too. It’s not always that you must have just one goal. Pushing her limits, Pritha has found several and each time passed the test in her own eyes. This last is the most important.

    Sanjeev Roy is the founder of Bullzi Inc. Amongst other things, he is a Coach and runs Reflections – a programme for leaders to reinvent, recharge and-re-energize themselves. By Finding the Best in themselves. 

    The next Reflections programme is scheduled between the 10th and 14th of April, 2019. Write in if you too want to rediscover your mojo.

    This article first appeared in the Mint on 23rd January, 2019.

  • Rediscover your mojo – by wasting some time

    Mojo

    –      A quality that attracts people to you and makes you successful and full of energy: Cambridge Dictionary

    –      To be able to find something you like doing, and to do it with passion, zeal, energy and enthusiasm: Urban Dictionary

    For a few years now, I have been working with business and social leaders, young entrepreneurs, writers and artists and many others seeking to rediscover their mojo. The primary space for this work is Reflections, an offsite programme run at specific times of the year, usually in Uttarakhand. Many participants have benefitted and truly rediscovered their mojo.

    This is the story of one such person who benefited from being a part of Reflections.

    What would it mean to you if I said that Mamta Borgoyary (48), the CEO of FXB India Suraksha, an NGO that works across 9 states in the areas of livelihood, quality education, health and child rights, had lost her mojo? Just a word borrowed from early blues musicians or something else? Etymologically, the word mojo belongs to the Black American Hoodoo spiritual lexicon and is a bagful of charms that turns tricks to keep you going. Our Mamta in this story had turned tricks in her organisation, pulling it up from a deep slide to go on to create significant social impact across the country. Clearly Mamta had kept the organisational mojo working. But what about Mamta herself?

    A full day and more

    Mother to two teenage high school children, Mamta lives in Delhi NCR. Her husband John, also a development sector professional, is currently based in Guwahati and spends weekends in Delhi. As a leader, Mamta is inspiring, empathetic and purposeful. As a mother she is available, committed and a good friend. Like most others, Mamta has believed that office is office and home is home and that life is lived with this separation.

    But apparently not. At a time when she was working with her leadership team to draw up plans for the future, something seemed amiss. On the surface all looked fine but she seemed to be lacking the spark and the enthusiasm. It was then that she realised that it had been like that for some time. That the task of leading an organisation and managing home as a single parent was beginning to overwhelm her.

    Losing your Mojo

    She, it would seem, had lost her mojo. This loss of mojo is something that maybe all of us have experienced. Very often we believe it is limited in its impact to either our business or personal life. In my work with organisation leaders, founders and young entrepreneurs, I have been struck by how the loss of mojo and its confusion with the popular narrative of ‘this is work’ or ‘this is personal’ prevents people from finding it back

    So why did Mamta lose her mojo?

    Mojo in the urban dictionary is the quality that fills us with energy, makes us more attractive to people and creates a virtuous cycle that makes us successful. It’s a bagful of invisible charms that one dips into to rejuvenate. However, where does one find that bag and how? Lets look at how Mamta found it back.

    The Unpacking at Reflections

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    Over the past few years she had experienced a lot of success. Turnarounds are difficult and makes for heroes. They require inspirational leadership, planning and a lot of hard work. Mamta had immersed herself in the task and her team had rallied around her. Time flew by and FXB India turned the corner.

    Around the same time, a great opportunity also came John’s way. He had the chance to work in his dream assignment. It required him to be away in the North East. The couple decided that they would do what it takes to make it work.

    Mamta thought she had two separate issues – that the idea of once again leading the organisation through another process of change and growth was not appealing AND managing as a single parent while holding the job down was overwhelming.

    As we spent time at Reflections talking through her challenges and unpacking them, Mamta realised that she really made no time for herself. In both her professional and personal spaces, she was always the ‘giver’ and ‘provider’. She delved deep into her psyche, thinking back to the time when she had enrolled for kathak classes, a dance form she loved and then given up as a waste of time, using the time instead for her family or work. ‘Dancing makes me very happy. I feel fulfilled from deep within. But I don’t have the time.’

    Finding her Mojo

    No alt text provided for this image

    She realised that taking a few hours out each weekend was probably the ‘me thing’ that she needed. She made it back to weekend classes with her Guru.

    Now her family makes sure that she does not miss her rehearsals because ‘when Mamta comes back from dancing, she is so alive and happy that we all feel very good.’ Today, FXB is chasing an ambitious goal and Mamta has just finished her third show on stage to resounding applause. Mamta has found her bag to dip into – a bagful of personal passion and a little wasting of time, to turn tricks in her own life.

    Sanjeev Roy is the founder of Bullzi Inc. Amongst other things, he is a Coach and runs Reflections – a programme for leaders to reinvent, recharge and-re-energize themselves. By Finding the Best in themselves. 

    The next Reflections programme is scheduled between the 8th and 11th of April, 2020. Write in if you too want to find your mojo. Read here for booking a seat.

    An edited version of this article first appeared in the Mint on 21st January, 2019

  • Reflections 2019 – A Programme for Senior Leaders – March 13th – 16th