Life Skills Launchpad(Part 1)

When a client of mine asked me to do a “LifeSkills” workshop for their recent management graduates, I was lost about what I should put into the training. After all, Life Skills take a lifetime to learn, and I can hardly pack enough into 3 or 4 days. But as with all things, the more I thought about it, the more I was able to crystallise my thoughts and zero down to some essential skills. These could at least get my participants thinking about what they would like to develop in their own professional and personal lives.

Here are some of the things we covered in the workshop:

We focused the workshop around Robert Dilts’ Logical Levels which is always a great framework for holistic introspection and development – for products, change management and ultimately it turns out for Life itself.

This is a simple representation of the model.

Purpose: What am I here for? Do you know what your purpose(s) in life is? As with everything we begin by helping people think about what their purpose is? In previous generations in India, this has never really been a problem. Society and family had defined our purpose for us. We studied till we were in our early twenties, then we got married, raised our children, helped in raising our grandchildren saved up money bought a ghar (house) and then a gadi (car) and then drifted into the spiritual before we died. In modern cosmopolitan India, these regular structures have been disrupted. You can buy your house and car before you hit 30. You may choose to marry or not, have children, or not… and then… what am I really here for? One of my participants asked me this question... all of 24 years old. The answer...? None of us has only one purpose, we all serve and have multiple purposes and it is crucial to identify these different purposes and nurture every aspect so that we are able to live whole and fulfilled lives. Using a simple yet thoughtful approach to identify our passions, mission, professions and vocation.

Identity and Roles :Who are you? Once we’ve identified the various purposes we have in our lives we then move on to the different Roles we play. Mother, father, brother, wife, subordinate, trainer, coach. Which of these roles is most important to me? If this is the most important role, what am I doing to fulfill the needs and obligations of this role. Using NLP and biofeedback techniques we explore and examine how each role feels to us and where we feel most comfortable. We resolve any leftover conflicts between different roles in our lives.

Values and Beliefs: What do you stand for? What do you think is right? Throughout our lives we make decisions and judgements based on these two parameters, our values and our beliefs. But are we always sure of what we stand for? Do we know how we make judgments, are we sure that this always serves us? Once we understand our values and our belief systems we can explain and rationalize the way we think and how we feel and why things upset us.

The first three elements are the areas that deal with your own development and growth. The Second three elements deal with our interaction with others and with the environment. Our skills, knowledge, behavior and environment

Skills and Capabilities: What do you know? What do you need to know? In his book “The Leadership Pipeline” Ramcharan, one of the greatest social scientists and management gurus of our time points describes the changes in skills, knowledge and attitudes you need to make at every stage of growth in your professional life. He calls these "leadership passages". In our personal lives as well, we need to identify the areas in which we need to develop skills and knowledge whether they be soft skills like better communication or hard skills like managing your finances. 

Behavior: I am what I repeatedly do – What are the behaviors that I repeatedly display, whether consciously or subconsciously. Are these behaviors useful, do they serve my purposes in life? If not, can I work to change them. Using the new behavior generator, we can purposefully generate new and more effective behaviors to increase our productivity, happiness and health. and finally ..

Environment: How do I manage my environment? Do I keep myself open to environmental influences allowing myself to be moved around on the whims of others or am I able to work with a strong base of self confidence aware of what is happening in the environment but not allowing myself to be swayed by it.

If we can begin by harnessing the power of these logical levels and their application in life, we can begin our journey towards health and happiness.

Watch-out for part 2 and 3 of Life Skills Launchpad

Get in touch with us: call +91 99300 21140 (raj) or +91 98203 00891 (andrea) email - [email protected] / [email protected]

follow us: facebook twitter instagram linkedIn

References: Robert Dilts' Logical Levels; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Charan; https://leadershippipelineinstitute.com/stephen-drotter.aspx;