Empowerment is the result of wholehearted participation

If the teams learn the secret of positive fields or mind space, they can improve their your Happiness Quotient. They can also get the best out of others. Making members of your team wholehearted participants rather than indifferent spectators, is the key to organizational success. Whole heartedness is a state of full presence. This state involves complete enjoyment of a task. Participation, with full commitment of body and mind, is irresistible. I become wholehearted when I give all of myself to an interaction or task. These interactions create a field, which allows me to be present in the moment, without defensiveness. The most fundamental characteristics of a positive field are, that it quells anxiety and produces feelings of acceptance and a feeling of being affirmed. It is like walking into a room full of people who love and accept you, unconditionally. It is a feeling of being meaningful and safe – this frees up energy for connecting. An important constituent of the positive field, according to George Prince of Synectics, is affirmations. An affirmation is a verbal, tonal or non-verbal act of appreciation. A compliment can be a verbal hug. A verbal hug can replace a thousand words. The field is most affected by positive, soul level motives or ’Sankalpa’. If the gut level motives are positive, the mere lack of skill in verbal, tonal and non-verbal transmissions can be overcome.

Building Co-operation within the company

Encourage top management to observe signs of conflict and co-operation. You can understand whether a company is doing well by :  The look in the people’s eyes.  The way they walk  The quality of the interaction.  You can see the effect of the positive field by how people help each other and share information. Constraint, Control and Compliance, reduces the positive field. Top down – constraints – cuts out the joy Bosses should exist to help people win. Explore co-operation within the organization. Identify conflicts and ask for suggestions to defuse them. Walk around the departments to identify potential problem areas. Encourage small group discussion and bonding.

Avoiding Negativity

The change management module provides an opportunity to share information of ways to avoid the negative field. Some of our careless phrases destroy ideas, unconsciously. Remove the negative emotions like anger, fear and revulsion from the team, like thorns from your foot.  Rewarding team creativity enhances teamwork  Share interesting articles.  Appreciate and award good performance even in bad times – this will keep employee morale high  Make every meal an enjoyable experience: improve the place, make it clear colourful and musical. Set dishes out attractively and chew slowly to appreciate the full flavour of the foods you eat.

Design communications

Ensure that all stake holders start with the same assumptions about what is required. Often each member of the team has limited knowledge about the product, thus reducing his chances of achieving success. They are like the six blind men and the elephant. Each touched a different part of the elephant and mentally imagined the elephant like a fan, a pillar and a large pipe. Some thinking tools like 6M help all stake holders to have a unified vision of the product. Communication needs to be clear and consistent. The mode of communication should be relevant to the participants. There is no point using e-mail, if when most have no access to the internet. The communication should create excitement. The Innovation Initiative for young executives in Ashok Leyland was kicked off with a contest. The prize an I-Pod. The communication should encourage response. Communication about problems can be through Ideation Corners, where participants are encouraged to write their solutions. Usable solutions should be shared and rolled out across the organization.

TAPPING STAKEHOLDER CREATIVITY (TSC)

Tapping stakeholder creativity (TSC) involves facilitating intense discussion and problem solving between stake holders to reinvent future products and processes. It is a radical new approach which enables companies to include the customers’ or vendors’ voice in developing a product, activity or service and encourages the TSC a tool that involves inventing or shaping the future together with customers. and is a radical new approach. As this is an unique innovation tool that helps synthesize the ideas of two or more groups with different viewpoints. It enables different teams of the company to participate with internal or external customers in creatively developing the future. TCC enables us to include the customer's voice in developing a product activity or service. This would be ensured by training all participants in creative problem solving , a process which will help achieve continuous improvement as well as quantum change on occasions. Vendors can rewrite the profit picture of a company by practicing Just In Time Management, quality improvement programmes and innovation initiatives.

Communication – speaking for easy listening

We are accustomed to giving our opinions and ideas in an environment where, frequently, every word is greeted with criticism. Such an environment is unfortunately the norm for many business meetings. Typically we begin by preparing the ground for the idea or point of view we are about to express. Having established an expectant audience you than slip in the idea or opinion and then move quickly to sell it as hard as possible, before anyone can jump in and attack it. This process for speaking is both time consuming, because of the potential for a high waffle content, and additionally can result in the idea or opinion being lost because your audience have given up listening to you.

Communication – listening for ideas

While listening to someone who speak, the mind is constantly being stimulated or triggered into thoughts of its own. These thoughts are sometimes directly related to what is being said and often apparently unrelated. Once the mind has been stimulated we tend to give attention to what is going on in the ‘“meeting in the your mind’” (often more interesting than the public one) and ‘“drop out’” of listening to the speaker. Often we will actually be “rehearsing” a response to something the speaker has said, only half listening to the speaker whilst, waiting for an opportunity to make our comment. The mind is a vast library of information, past experiences and connections, most of which are outside our conscious memory. Thoughts which are stimulated or triggered in the mind when we are listening to someone speak are actually trying to tell us something. We are taught from an early age that we must always concentrate and not allow our minds to wander. This is the correct way to listen in certain situations. For example if I am listening to directions to get somewhere, I need to listen intently to understand and capture what is being said.