Perceptiveness- the other attribute

An interview with Dhruva Trivedy, Chief Interventionist and Promoter,

PERCONTHE STRATEGIC INTERVENTIONISTS

Who is Dhruva Trivedy?• A practising ‘Change Management’ Consultant for over

24 years

• Rich experience of corporate interface for more than 40years

• Has cross cultural expertise of addressing change andchange-related issues

• Is a passionate trainer on behavioural matters

• Has been delivering lectures with practical allusions toreal life situations

• Has had fundamental educational grooming in premierinstitutions, such as St. Columba’s High School, NewDelhi, Hindu College, University of Delhi and the TataInstitute Social Sciences, Mumbai

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Would you state a few things, as to how you have worked your way into becoming a successful

change management consultant? 1I do not know if I have been successful or not, but I cansurely tell you how I have reached where I am. To cut thelong story short, let me confess that I felt too tied downto a straight cut 9am to 6pm job, even though thechallenges were many, the decision making was withoutkeeping the future trends in mind. Globalisation wasnowhere in sight. But I kept sensing the onslaught ofcompetition with the Japanese major Suzuki making itsentry and eventually ancillary units became my targetaudience, after I quit my last job. While dealing withthem and setting up their HR systems, I discovered thatquality training in basics of management and behaviouralskills was required at all levels.

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Would you state a few things, as to how you have worked your way into becoming a successful

change management consultant? 2I was conducting training sessions once in a while and Irealised I had a potential of being an effective trainer andhere was an opportunity that I could cash on. I startedbeing busy training at all levels, from Operatives to VicePresidents. Soon I realised that it was only creating ahype with a lot of appreciation coming in. But the effectswere not sustainable. That is when we found a morepragmatic approach of addressing transformation – ablend of TQM and OD and we decided to call it‘Morphing’ a word coined by Dr. Deepak Chopra andborrowed from IT. The product or service was found to beideal for the SME sector and we had a great experience ofsuccess in implementing the processes and approaches.

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What has inspired you to the concept of perceptiveness?

• The marked distinction between TransactionalLeadership and Transformational Leadership

• Interactions with corporate leaders in a majorityof cases, have revealed that they would ratherconfine themselves to a transactional role andnot venture out to taking risks. They wouldrelatively await that nudge to come by, whenthey would ‘make believe’ to shake upeverything.

• We are not talking about them!

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What are the attributes a Transformational Leader essentially must possess?

• He has to be a visionary• He has to be proactive*• He has to possess a risk taking ability*• He has to be a great empathiser*• He has to be extremely perceptive

Although these are characteristics like many fundamental ones, suchas communicating or motivational abilities etc., that ought to befound in Transactional Leaders also, we are mentioning thesespecifically, because they need an added reinforcement for this kindof leadership and are usually found to be intense.

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Why did you choose only perceptiveness and not the others?

• I think enough has been said about theothers, while discussing leadership traits bydifferent management ‘thinkers’ both in publicforums and in classrooms

• Many organisations and many educationalinstitutions have conducted intense surveys on‘empathy’, for instance

• Very little has been said or researched aboutperceptiveness particularly in the organisationalcontext

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Who inspired you to think about this concept?

I got drawn towards the in-depthunderstanding of this concept , when I firstadministered the Personal EffectivenessScale designed by a behaviouralscientist, the late Prof Udai Pareek.Later all contributions of Prof Pareek leftme spellbound and I became his ardentfollower

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Perceptiveness – defined by Prof. Udai Pareek

The ability to pick up verbal and non-verbal cuesfrom others indicates perceptiveness……………………….………………perceptiveness can be used appropriately orinappropriately. If a person is too conscious of others’feelings, he may inhibit his interactions. Similarly, aperson who is too conscious of his own limitations willtend not to take risks. Effective perceptiveness can beincreased by checking others’ reactions to what issaid. A person who does not do this (in other words, ifhe is not open) may become overly concerned aboutthe cues he receives.

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 1

Many years ago, when I was a child of five, my elder sister whohad been an alumni of the Convent of Jesus & Mary School inNew Delhi, took me to St. Columba’s School for admission.While she was talking to the then Principal of theschool, Reverend Brother Ponies, I actually swayed away fromwhere they were standing and got closer to the large windowpanes that were coloured and were translucent. Theconversation didn’t interest me but the coloured panes did; atthe same time I was not oblivious to the fact that seriousconversation was on, between the two elders that wasconcerning my going to school.

Obviously the conversation on admission did not inspire mebecause I was only 5 years old, but I did not undermine itsimportance - that was perceptiveness.www.percontsi.com

What according to you builds perceptiveness? 2The great story writers and the great poets are live examples ofperceptive people. Recapitulate the works of famous classics ofJaishankar Prasad, Rabindranath Tagore, ErnestHemingway, Anton Chekhov or even William Shakespeare.Don’t you find their minutest of observations narrated in themost exquisite style? In his short story ‘Puraskar’, JaishankarPrasad talks about ‘Aardraa nakshatra’ or the wet star. Whendoes one see wetness in stars? Just after the rains in the midstof the clouds!

The following lines from Old Man and the Sea of ErnestHemingway, “He hears the leaps and whirs of the flyingfish, which he considers to be his friends, and thinks withsympathy of the small, frail birds that try to catch them.” This isan observation at sea. Witness the details he has gone into.What do you think the writers are reflecting? Nothing butperceptiveness!

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 3

There are two ways of answering your question:

1. Discuss as to what were the essential ingredients thathelped to build perceptiveness and

2. Discuss the process by which perceptiveness could bebuilt.

Let me take them up one by one:

The essential ingredients as I see them are:

Sensitivity, Attention, Consciousness or Awareness. Eachleads to the other.

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What according to you builds perceptiveness? 4

The most understandable definition of sensitivity wouldbe to describe it as that sense, which feels the presence ofa stimulus and responds.

Attention refers to the process by which we consciouslyselect a subset of information from that stimulus and focuson it for enhanced processing and integration

Once such information is processed and integrated, suchinformation becomes part of the repository of awareness(consciousness, knowledge)

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How would you take a closer look at these ingredients? 1

The process in general:

Daniel Goleman in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (1995)talks about self awareness that leads to better selfmanagement, which in turn shows the way to better socialawareness and which eventually helps in building greatinterpersonal abilities. The question we need to ask is, as tohow do we generate this self awareness?

Our discussion on the ingredients would in fact guide usthrough. We have to be very sensitive in the first place andbe able to filter what should catch our attention. This is astrong interplay of logical reasoning and emotional feelingsand we have to judiciously practise what we wish toregister. Results are visibly pronounced.

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How would you take a closer look at these ingredients? 2

Had the opportunity to make a short trip to the MartinWickramasinghe Museum at Galle. Looking at the collectionof artefacts and going through his ‘Aspects of SinhaleseCulture’ made a phenomenal revelation that all greatpersons significantly possessed the element ofperceptiveness, without which they could have achievednothing.

Martin became self aware through his surroundings, thelandscapes of the sea, lake studded with little islands, theflora and fauna, the forested hinterland, and the changingpatterns of life and culture of the villagers. From the age offive he traversed the alphabets of Sinhala, Devanagri andEnglish and finally even gave up schooling, only to becomea great scholar, philosopher and inspirational writer,gathering a sense of pride for Sri Lankans.www.percontsi.com

How would you take a closer look at these ingredients? 3

Similarly in another part of the subcontinent was KaziNazrul Islam, who on his own, grew out of fundamentalIslamic education, working as a muezzin, into a popularwriter with a secular understanding of the Bengali culture.Nazrul began learning Bengali and Sanskrit literature, aswell as Hindu scriptures such as the Puranas. He was undertremendous pressure because of his father’s early demiseto earn a living for himself and the entire family. But hispassion was to become a litterateur and therefore, eventhough having worked as an actor in the village theatretroupe, as a cook in a bakery or having joined the BritishArmy and elusively not taking the matriculationexamination he survived to become a great literarypersonality and eventually the national poet of Bangladesh.

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What according to you is the connect?

Noticeably in both cases we see exposure to myriad ofexperiences, not pursuant of formal education, passion tocollect facts and figures and eventually giving themexpression through reasoning and emotional content.

These two personalities as examples only go to confirm thatthe process of perceptiveness builds on

•Sensitivity

•Filtered attention

•Conscious awareness of self and surroundings

helping them to manage their own selves and sustain theirpopularity (relationships)

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 1We go by two important sayings, “practice makes a manperfect” and “attempting to do multiple things at a time”

The first practice:

Doug Blackie, the leadership expert from Canada suggeststhat real leaders were consistent leaders…he goes on tosay, “by and large, effective leaders are those who bringconsistency to their vision, priorities and decisions” Whatwe are referring to is consistency in attempting to practice.How does it feel if we do not brush our teeth in themorning or let’s say we have forgotten to brush? Miserable!Isn’t it? For those of us who do not rely on e-news but on areal newspaper, it’s the same feeling that we land ourselvesin, that we have missed out something in the day! Why dowe feel that way?

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 2

The answer lies in the fact that since childhood we havebeen advised to do so and have developed them as habits.When we grow up, nobody tells us and we succumb to thesituation for the want of a habit or the presence of it. Weget caught unawares and get hit by a drunken driver, if wehad not noticed him well ahead of time or we continue torestrict the growth of our organisation and let theorganisation die its own death for want of diversificationand growth, because we missed out on our competitorsdoing it, or may be someone else doing it in anotherunrelated vertical. Perhaps having to be watchful pays off.What is this watchfulness? Sensitivity + Attention +Awareness – again, being perceptive….not once….but byconsistently and consciously practising them! Habit!!http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/18-tricks-to-make-new-habits-stick.htmlwww.percontsi.com

How do we build our perceptiveness? 3

The second practice:

How do I pay attention to an unrelated event or asituation, when I am focussed into an action at a point intime? Do I lose focus? Does my focus get divided or diluted?When your wife or your mother is cooking, because youwere going to have guests and she has five dishes to serve.Does she lose focus or is it even diluted? What helps her dothat with the kind of dexterity we get to see? And to add tothat, if she has been a dedicated housewife, are tasksrelated to washing clothes, mopping the floors, dusting anddishwashing! Having seen my mother do all that, inretrospect, I realise that it was the order in every house andshe was no exception, perhaps! Even today they performedthis role with an unquestionable adroitness. How?

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 4

How did the bread or the rice never get burnt? How did thestew or the curry never get too thick? How did the omelettenot have eggs that were left behind raw? Alertness indifferent dimensions? Are they similar to jugglers?Alertness again = Sensitivity and Attention. But what aboutsuch alertness in different directions with the right kind ofpriority every time? Perceptiveness again!

We get to see two new dimensions in this practice, besideswhat we have discussed in the first practice.

•Acting simultaneously in different directions whichrequires multi-skilling

•Prioritising initiatives with precision and accuracy whichrequires tremendous amount of self discipline

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How do we build our perceptiveness? 5

Without going into details of consistency in consciouspractice, let us talk about simultaneous multi-dimensionalapproaches. Just as cooking different dishes and preparingfor it, the recipes have to be on your finger tips to deal withmultiple situations if you were a leader and then practise‘cooking’ them simultaneously. Sensitivity, attention andawareness would undoubtedly be utilised consistently. Youhave a customer coming in to inspect yourinfrastructure, you have a serious issue confronting thequality of your operations because of inconsistent powersupply, because of the harvest season you have a shortageof skilled manpower and to top it all your dispatches thatwere to occur have got delayed because your outsourcedlogistics is facing a strike. Here jumps in the problemsolver, the trans- www.percontsi.com

How do we build our perceptiveness? 6

actional leader, who does not have an extraordinary sense ofperceptiveness. He would perhaps want to set things rightbefore the arrival of the customer and raise his anxiety levelstrying to fill in the gaps with short term solutions, so thatapparently everything appears to be right. A perceptivetransformational leader would on the other hand anticipatethe strike and make alternative arrangements for shipment ofgoods, also create a pool of skilled workers to be outsourcedduring the harvest season, which he knew came everyyear, try and arrange a captive power generation unit andalso try to buy some time from the customer if that waspossible, so that everything appears normal even if there wasa sudden announcement of his arrival. This would actuallymean acting in different directions and prioritising everyactivity. www.percontsi.com

In order to conclude what advice would you leave for the younger entrepreneurs and managers?

I have two things to say:

1. Acquire self discipline, by scheduling activities and settingalarms for reminding , so that the activities can be taken upon time. A conscientious person would not need all this, butwhat is significant is that practising has to become a habit.Practising to develop alertness and multi-dimensionalapproaches.

2. Keep yourself and your five senses awake all the time. Ifneed be one could seek the assistance of meditation. Thiswould also help developing a passion for knowing.

It was wonderful giving an expression to my thoughts. Thanks!

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