INVITING CORPORATE TRAINERS FOR BUSINESS PARTNER PROGRAM

I have been talking to a large number of soft skills trainers as of late. Actually soft skills trainers would be an incorrect tag, corporate trainers would be better. We have recently launched a Business Partner program wherein we work with trainers from different leagues of life across the globe, to give clients the best possible experience. Sounds interesting? The trainers we have spoken to found it tooJ

So let me tell you a little about the program to give you a better idea. You know how we have been working with various expert vendors to provide our clients with a wider range of offerings in fields like E-Learning, Organisational Development, Executive Coaching, Project Management, Risk Management, IT, Computers, Finance, etc. Well we thought since this model is working so well, let’s come up with a model for Freelance Trainers where we tie up with them and further broaden our offerings.

Now you must be wondering how this really works and how it benefits everybody. Let me explain.

How it Works: The corporate trainers that we tie up with go out into the market and represent us as Business Partners. So they get business in our name and we get it delivered. Simple isn’t it?

Benefits to Clients:

1. They get greater variety in terms of offerings

2. They get the most skilled trainers delivering their sessions

3. They get to converse with trainers right from the start who understand their needs better and can offer them better solutions than Business Development Executives

4. They can have their needs fulfilled at any location across the globe

5. They can have a single company executing their PAN India assignments, giving them consistency and standardisation at all locations

6. They know they will receive the best as far as quality, integrity and transparency goes as The Yellow Spot ensures these values are maintained even by its Business Partners

7. They don’t need to worry about issues they may face with Freelancers like them falling sick and not turning up for the session as The Yellow Spot has around 80 to 100 consultants across the country and can easily arrange for a back-up

Benefits to Business Partners:

1. They find it easy to get business as they have the backing of an 8 year old company with more than a 150 clients

2. They can offer the client a session even if it is not something they are experts in or it is a PAN India assignment which they cannot deliver on their own

3. They get preference for delivering sessions in which they have expertise and have brought business in
4. They get support in business development and in content development, wherever required

5. They get the experience of being an entrepreneur with the support of an established organisation and the motivation of being part of a large team

6. They earn greater remuneration as they get a Business Development fee for every business they bring in and a Training Delivery fee for every session they deliver, besides being able to get a higher ticket value than they would have got as a freelancer

7. They can work at their own pace as The Yellow Spot believes in proactiveness and taking initiative rather than imposing targets

8. They can maintain their freedom as they can continue freelancing or running their own business

Benefits to The Yellow Spot:

1. We have a large motivated team reaching out to more and more clients

2. Our sales team has a good understanding of delivery and hence brings home a better understanding of the requirement

3. We have more expertise on our team and can offer our clients more

4. We get to help trainers who are really interested in learning more

5. We get to learn more through sharing

6. We can reach out and help more participants through the quality and passion that we offer

Well those are the points that I can currently think of, am sure there must be more that you can think of. I’m hoping you must have got an idea about this program and why we keen to promote it. It’s really a Win-Win-Win solution for the Client, Business Partner and Us. Isn’t that just great!

Visit us at https://www.theyellowspot.com/ to know more or call us on +91 9769733305. See you soon:)

HOW TO SPOT STRESS AND FIX IT?

Stress Management training definitely helps you with handling and managing your stress. But does it also help you in identifying whether if you are stressed? Well, it certainly does.

Most of us don’t get through the first step of managing stress. And the first step is ‘getting aware that you are stressed’.

Getting aware of something happening with us or inside us is the most difficult thing of all. If you get aware what you are going through, most of the work is done there. This is because now you know what is it that needs to be worked on. You obviously cannot work on something you don’t know about.

Now the question is, how do you get aware?

There are some symptoms that you can notice. If you want to check if you are stressed, you can see if you are showing any of these symptoms.

Some of the behavioural and physical signs of being stressed are;

• Inability to sleep
• Fatigue
• Inability to manage time
• Lack of confidence
• Increased consumption of alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes, etc.
• Anger outbursts
• Relationship issues
• Disinterest
• Social withdrawal
• Sudden weight loss/gain
• Mood swings
• irritation
• Aches/pains
• Heart issues

These are just few of the behavioural & physical changes hampering work life balance that you may experience if you are stressed. There are many more. If you are stressed, you will observe similar changes in the way you operate in your regular life.

You have to very careful in observing them. Most of the time we think it is no big deal. You believe it is very common to be tired or being aggressive at time. Well, sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s not. While some of these can be common and not so big in nature, some of them can be life threatening. Hence, you cannot afford to ignore them. You must be very conscious about this.

Stress can be life threatening and also a roadblock to manage performance. There is a limit to which your body and your mind can take in. if you ignore it for far too long, it can get very difficult for your body and mind to take it any further and it will give up.

Identifying and managing stress is the need of the hour. With the rapidly changing environment that we live in to chase each other in a rat race, stress is a crucial part of our lives. It cannot be taken lightly.

Considering the current situation, stress management trainings are booming big time. Stress management training will not just give you tools to manage stress, it will help you identify your stress level first. A good stress management training starts with an assessment which will give you an idea of how stressed you are. That is supposed to be the basis to work upon.

So, start with the first step, check if you are stressed. If you are, stress management training is the key. If you are not, still, stress management is something that everyone should opt for. Right!

HOW BASIC EXCEL TRAINING CAN MULTIPLY YOUR BUSINESS

Excel training is one of the technical trainings that I would recommend for everyone. In fact, in today’s world I don’t think you can survive without it!

Consider our case. A training company with huge amounts of data. We have been in business since the past 10.5 years and have had more than 150 clients. The number of training sessions we would have done would be far beyond that figure, as we have luckily had plenty of repeat business from most of our clients. So you can just imagine the amount of training material we have with us!

One fine day, me and my colleague decided that managing the data was getting too difficult. We had a huge pile of activities sheets, game sheets, etc. collected over the past 10 years. Some of these had their soft copies while some were stand alone. We also had multiple documents with their various versions for each of the sessions. In short, we didn’t know where to start from!

Guess what helped us sort this huge mess out? The excel training that we had taken sometime back. It helped us in sorting everything and then putting all the data in a single sheet. We added all the files to one sheet; mentioning all the outlines, proposals, presentations, activities, videos and handouts that we had for the respective session.

We also created a separate sheet which listed all the activities that we generally use in our training sessions. We added possible outcomes of each of those activities along with a description of the same. We also used the drop down box feature of excel to add which activity could be used to target which outcome. And I must say, it has made life a lot easier!

Many of the functions taught during an excel training are very useful and can really help you improve on your time management and effort. For example, consider the function feature they teach you in excel training. Ones like sum, average, etc. They are extremely useful and we use them all the time in our accounting as well as the trainer reports that we create and send to the client.

Filters are also a very useful feature. Sometimes we get huge amounts of data with multiple columns. To pull out what you exactly want can be quite a harrowing task. However, if you use the filter function, you can get it in a jiffy! Pivot tables can also prove to be a very useful function. And that’s something you must insist on learning in an excel training.

In this way excel provides a wide range of features that can make life a lot simpler not just in our professional life but also in our personal life. It can help us do what we need to quickly and with minimal effort, giving us the scope to focus on more important coaching skills training. And the best part about it is it eliminates the human error, something which can crop up multiple times when you are handling large amounts of data manually.

Three cheers for excel training

ADVANTAGES OF BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE TRAINING

Business etiquette training mind sound very offensive to some people if tell them they need it. But it is not. Believe me.

Most of time people judge you just by looking at how to behave and carry yourself. You don’t even have to say a word. Maintaining a decorum in a professional space is considered very important. How well mannered are you, is something that can decide your success.

Your good behaviour will always work in your favour. If you are well behaved, people seem to like you and feel comfortable being around you. Your etiquette makes people see you as a nice person and their respect for you will always increase.

If you are in a company of senior people, be ready to be judged for every action of yours. Well, I am not being judgemental here. Trust me. But this is just something that we all know. Senior people always like when you are well mannered and well behaved. Be it in a professional or personal environment.

I know it can be very difficult to remember the dos and don’ts every single time. It definitely is a tedious job to keep all of it in mind. Not just when you are in the physical presence of someone but also when you are talking to someone on the phone or writing a professional email to them.

Learning the appropriate meeting & greeting etiquette and also the telephone and email etiquette is very important. Now, how do make sure you know all of these. This is when the business etiquette training workshops comes in the picture.

Taking a formal business etiquette training will help you understand the dos and don’ts. The next step is to start practising them. It can be little difficult initially to remember all of these as we said before. But, after some time you will get the hang of it.

It might be lot of work to learn these things and actually use them. But, trust me the advantages of it that I told you about through out my article are totally worth it. In terms of personality and organisational development it will definitely work in your favour.

The objective of this article was to tell you about the advantages of business etiquette in your professional life, according to me. I am sure there are many more advantages apart from the few that I mentioned. Look out for a business etiquette training workshop and let me know how it benefited you.

The Yellow Spot Announces an Open Workshop - "Walk The Change"

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new” - Socrates

Do you agree with Socrates? We do! Just a small addition from our end – It’s not about fighting the old, ‘but partnering with it’, for building the new. For its only after befriending the old, can you let go of it and make way for the new.

So what’s the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ we are talking about?

The old is the strong conditioned beliefs, values, notions, assumptions and habits that we have, hidden deep in our subconscious that pulls us back and prevent us from having our wishes fulfilled. So sometimes no matter how hard we try to create a change and move forward in life they impede our growth and all our efforts are left in vain. It’s pretty much why it’s so difficult living up to New Year Resolutions or acting on feedback given by others!

 So what do we do? Weed them out and march forward towards embracing new opportunities. There are many waiting for you…

'Walk The Change' Course Outline

Who can attend???

Individuals, Executives, Managers, HR/L&D Heads, Change Agents, etc…

Session Details:

Venue: Andheri, Mumbai

Dates: 29th & 30th June, 2018

Investment: Rs. 12,500/- + GST

(Incl. of tea, snacks, lunch, facilitation & handouts)

***Early bird offer: Rs. 10,000/- + GST on booking before 30th April, 2018***

Contact:

Nandini Tandon

E: nandini.tandon@theyellowspot.com

Sayali Sawant

E: sayali.sawant@theyellowspot.com

Visit us at www.theyellowspot.com 

Realities of Corporate Training Institutes in Mumbai

There are many Corporate Training Institutes in Mumbai. Some are large and have a large sales force and in-house training delivery team, while others are individual trainers who operate from their homes, what we call one man armies!  There are also many aspiring trainers in the market, some of whom have elementary knowledge and no formal experience. All three are constantly competing with each other to grab their share of the training pie.

Apart from these three categories, their is a fourth category that we most certainly cannot leave out. It's the training managers, learning officers and process trainers that form the in-house functional and behavioural trainers teams who conduct programs for their respective organisations.

Each of these categories have their own specialities, strengths, lacunas and challenges that they face while trying to accomplish the required outcomes.

Although the training industry in India is a multi billion rupee industry, yet it is rather unregulated and there are no set standards that everyone follows. On one hand this leaves room for a lot of creativity at work, while on the other it gives rise to glaring gaps in the quality of training delivered.

If training is to be successful in fulfilling the required outcomes, it has to follow some standardised methods and processes. Let's have a look at some of these:

1. The first and foremost area to explore is whether training is the solution to the issue being faced. I know you are surprised to read this as my first point but I think it the first question that needs to be asked!

On many occasions I see leaders looking at training as a solution to everything. However they forget that the issue might be due to other reasons and training might just provide a temporary solution. Training employees cannot solve all your system, process and leadership issues.

2. Now if we have identified that it is a training issue then we need to identify exactly where the training is required. Very often leaders think that if they train their employees then everything will change. They however often forget that change has to be driven top-down. It's first the leaders that need to change and this wave of change needs to then percolate to the rest of the organisation. We sometimes forget that actions are louder than words and if we change first the rest of our team will automatically follow.

So the question is that what can help us decide whether the issue at hand is a training issue or not and if it is one, then how do we make a program that is effective enough to produce the desired change in the organisation?

My experience of having trained for the past 11 years tells me that to decide if this is a behavioral training need is possible only when you do a thorough Training needs analysis and identification. This means you need to talk to various different people in the organization to get an idea of the situation and the need in its totality and understand the commonalities as well as the outliers. Trainers need to learn to probe neutrally to avoid bringing in personal biases and that is where i find Edgar Schein’s human process consulting techniques very helpful.

These techniques help us in identifying the common factors and also the not so common ones! Once these factors are identified, we can then present the findings to the concerned stakeholders, the top executives to be ideally involved in the process.

By effective probing we can successfully make them share what they think about the same and then help them zero in on developmental areas, some of which they need to work upon internally and some which can be addressed by hard skills or soft skills training.

Hmmm...Got you thinking? Well I'm going to leave you with these thoughts right now and will catch up with you soon to share some more thoughts on what can take Corporate Training Institutes in Mumbai to the next level. In the meantime I'd love to hear your views on the same. Do get in touch with us by visiting our website http://www.theyellowspot.com/ See you soon:)

Want to Know More Facts about Corporate Training Companies in Mumbai?

I am back with my discussion on Corporate Training Companies in Mumbai.

If you remember, we were looking at areas that these companies need to look at to take them to the next level.

So let's continue with the points:

3. The next step for a top corporate training company would be to check the outcomes that the client wants from the program. We must also assess whether this outcome can be accomplished in the timeline provided by the client and whether it needs more inputs before, during and /or after the program.

Here one needs to be able to identify the existing gap properly, whether it is a skills, knowledge or an attitude gap. Attitude gaps usually takes the longest to fill over skills and knowledge gaps. Coaching and counselling are usually the best way to go about with them.

Take a note of what I'm going to tell you now carefully as here is where most of the corporate training institutes in Mumbai as well as solo trainers often falter. Very often in the fear of loosing the business we give in to the client's demands. We land up promising to deliver objectives that are not possible in the given time and/or in the methodology the client approves. This eventually leads to unsuccessful training interventions.

Most successful training programs are well assessed, delivered objectively using instructional design techniques and are followed up well post the delivery. However the ground reality is that due to paucity of time, funds and pressure from business; very often clients wants everything to be delivered in one go. They lack the resources to spread the intervention across a longer duration and more often than not do not even give enough time given to the pre and post program work. The results in poor programs which either do not create the expected change or create a very short term impact with low learner retention.

To tackle this problem, my suggestion is to follow a middle approach. A consultant can suggest what is good or ideal and look at the training not as a one day event but as an intervention. He can openly suggest his or her findings as well as accept the clients challenges, clearly sharing what outcome is possible in the time allotted. A good training intervention is always a joint effort and not one person's responsibility. Thus if the consultant joins hands with the client in fulfilling the objectives; the outcome is better, there are no false expectations set and the consultant can go ahead doing his best in whatever opportunity he has been given without taking the entire burden on himself.

 

Joining Hands with the Client

4. Most training programs and interventions land up being person dependent and largely dependent on the knowledge and skills of the trainer and his interpretation of the organisational issue at hand. This typically results in a trainer being able to only partly solve the issue at hand due to his limited knowledge and experience as an individual, leading to very few training programs being successful in creating the desired change in individuals and organisations.

This is where corporate training companies that have diverse trainers and consultants have an upper hand. If these trainers can all lend their expertise to the training intervention, then it becomes more holistic in nature and can successfully solve the issue at hand.

5. Most of the theories and concepts that are used during delivery are picked up from the west and are well accepted and applied blindly without much doubt. Some of these concepts come with good research and backing while many of them are just eastern philosophies which are repackaged and sold back to the east in a flashy costlier form!

Trainers and training companies need to ensure they use concepts that actually tackle the organisational issue and not just offer good sounding concepts that may result in not meeting the objectives.

Am sure I have given you enough food for thought right now and am hoping it will help in making your training interventions more successful. Once Corporate Training Companies in Mumbai start looking at interventions holistically and truly look at partnering with their client stakeholders at every front there's no stopping them. If they can have a consultative approach towards their interventions and also have a long term approach over a short term one, they can definitely look at being one of the top Corporate Training Companies in Mumbai.

Have something you would want to discuss to help you take your training interventions to the next level? You can definitely contact us by visiting our website http://www.theyellowspot.com/ 

Not just another Train the Trainer program

Developing as a Facilitator

What exactly is the difference between a trainer and a facilitator? Think they are the same? To tell you the truth, just like most other people, I was not aware of the difference either before i entered the learning and development space. I actually thought that a Facilitator Development Program was equivalent to a Train the Trainer program!

So let me explain the difference to you. A trainer is one who is well informed about the content that he has to deliver but a facilitator may not be well aware about the content. Confused? I'll explain. Well, facilitating is basically ‘making an action easier’ and bringing out the learning from it. So, a facilitator is one who helps the participants in assessing the issue and finding out a way to resolve it while point to specific learning outcomes. So a facilitator does not have to be a subject matter expert. He just needs to help the subject matter experts to analyse what wrong and help them reach a solution by facilitating the process.

Facilitation at its Best

Facilitation focuses more on the learning aspect of the process rather than focusing on achieving the target. In fact, it is actually about focusing on achieving the objectives from the perspective of a learner.

So a facilitator helps in assessing, planning and guiding in a process by encouraging the group members to participate and contribute their ideas and learn from it during the process. However one thing that the facilitator needs to keep in mind at all points of time that he must carry a non-biased attitude. He must give every member the same opportunity to contribute and should not contribute his own point of view on the situation being discussed, lest he colour the opinions of the members. He is just supposed to facilitate the process of drawing out ideas from the members and bring them to the table, not add his own. Thus a trainer who can facilitate learning engages his audience the most and helps them draw meaning and awareness from activities which they were unable to do in the past.

The FaDP

To facilitate the development of a Trainer into a Facilitator, we are conducting a Facilitator Development program. We call this the FaDP and its going to be held sometime in May in association with Pegasus Institute for Excellence. I am frankly super excited about it and am eagerly waiting for it!!! It's a great opportunity and am so glad that I am going to be a part of it. To be coached by a person of the calibre of Mr. CK Dwarkanath is a true privilege. He has an experience of around 20 years of service with organisations like IISc, DRDO and ILFS. Currently, he is a senior faculty in Pegasus Institute for Excellence and also is the lead for Knowledge management, Research and innovation. He has special interests in subjects like co-creation, faculty readiness in higher education and employability enhancement of students. As a programme architect, he blends in the conceptual detailing of the program with participative action research and has already coached many participants on the same.

FaDP is about learning the facilitation concepts by experiencing the facilitation practices in a simulated environment for developing oneself in the facilitative process. The methodology that is used is simulations, role plays, narrative inquiry, etc.

So why should you join this program when you are already doing well at what you are doing?

1. To become more effective in your profession by 'learning to train'
2. To learn concepts and professional practices to make your programs more effective
3. To learn to evolve as a better facilitator or as a better coach

All you have to have to benefit the most from the program is, is the readiness to ‘Know’ things (concepts), ‘Do’ things (practice) and ‘Be’ (self), the three spheres of learning. The ultimate objective of this program is to enable individuals to ‘learn to learn’ and to facilitate learning. Mind you, facilitation development is not just limited to Facilitators and trainers. Anyone could be an eligible participant, be it a coach, consultant, leader, manager at any level, teacher, professor, social worker, tutor, etc. So it is an open platform and anyone can be a part of it. In fact, I myself am a novice in the L&D space, but am eagerly looking forward to program. I know it is definitely going to add a lot of value to me not just as an L&D professional but even as an individual. It perfectly falls under our philosophy of ensuring that we also add value to our clients as well as ourselves.

It would therefore be great if you could join us to be a part of this 'beyond the Train the Trainer program!' This developmental program will definitely help you in self-development and become more effective professionally. To know more about the FaDP, you can drop us a mail on info@theyellowspot.info or call us on +91 9769733305. Don't forget to visit our website http://www.theyellowspot.com/ for more information about us and our offerings:)

Our Organisation is a Learning Organisation

Honestly speaking, a Learning Organisation as a concept is very complex. However, if I were to put it simply, a learning organisation is one which continuously transforms itself through learning. So it is one where people in the organisation look forward to increasing their capability to gain better outcomes in order to achieve what they truly desire. It is therefore the process of overall development of the people, culture, processes and technology of an organisation and also it's ability to deal with the external environment.

For an organisation to be a learning organisation, it has to work as a team on a whole. It has to be one solid unit. Why as a team, because when you truly work as a team, you learn a lot from each other and develop at a much faster rate.

We all know the three pillars of a team right? Openness, inclusiveness and control. Since a learning organisation is made up of one big team, these pillars are also essential to a learning organisation.

A learning organization has to have an open environment where people are open with and to each other, open to suggestions, open to discussions and most importantly open to learning. It has to look at inclusiveness, which is about people feeling included, the feeling of belongingness. Lastly, it also needs to consider the control factor, which talks about trusting people to do what they have to without too much control, yet keeping enough to maintain the required order. It therefore believes in letting people work on their own by giving them the power to make decisions as and when required.

Typically which kind of organisations is this seen in more? Flat organisations where each person is responsible, teams are very well connected and everyone knows what’s happening, not just internally but also externally i.e. technologically, politically, socially, with competitors, etc. That is when an organisation truly learns and eventually develops itself.

Transforming from a Traditional to a Learning Organisation[/caption]

Well, if you ask me, the best example of a learning organisation for me is ‘The Yellow Spot’ itself. At The Yellow Spot, we truly believe in practising what we preach. So when we go around telling our clients to build a learning organisation, we ensure ours is one too! So we have a flat structure with an open culture where employees are more like partners. We don't believe in hierarchies and work as a team; deal with & solve problems, discuss, suggest and learn together. All these are of prime importance to us and are the main reason for making us reach where we have. So every new programme we deliver, we learn something new from it and ensure we use the learning to take future programmes to the next level. Apart from this, we also spend time in reading, reflecting, experimenting, attending other sessions, etc. to ensure that we are updated and well versed to deal with the current needs of  our client organisations and their people. That is how we are a learning organisation ourselves.

Now coming back, why do learning organisations play such an important role? Primarily because they focus on both individual and organisational development, which are highly interrelated and cannot be treated separately. They focus on the total quality of the organisation by developing the individuals, teams, leaders and the company on the whole; to be able to sustain themselves in the ever changing environment and move ahead to create a difference.

They foster an environment of team learning which helps in thinking together to manage the complexities to take the business to the next level. They offer an open culture and emphasize on a readiness to unlearn things in order to learn new things and develop oneself. The people oriented approach they follow always pays off, as the human resource is the only resource that actually appreciates with time!

Learning in an organisation is a continuous process and when implemented appropriately, it positively reflects across levels and helps in managing change, creating a competitive advantage and developing and engaging all the stakeholders taking into consideration their collective aspirations. It thus brings in the feeling of togetherness in the organisation and builds a cohesive team which helps take it through to the next level.

Having realised the importance of a learning organisation, organisations today are investing heavily on their developmental activities. They are empowering their employees and giving them opportunities to develop and go to the next level. This in turn is increasing employee motivation, engagement and the feeling of ownership and loyalty that they have towards their company.

As one of the top corporate training companies in India, we help organisations step into such a learning environment and help them grow. Our developmental programs help organisations adapt to change and deal with challenges in the rapidly changing environment. We help them become self sufficient and capable of sustaining growth. Learning is an on-going process for transformation and learning encourages innovation, which further encourages sustainability in this highly competitive world. Hence learning and developing with time is important and essential.

So when are you planning to become a learning organisation? If you need help in your learning journey, you can always let us know. Visit our website http://www.theyellowspot.com/ and let us know how we can assist you.

Taking Forward Transactional Analysis Training

Welcome to Part 2 of our article on Transactional Analysis Training. In the last article we discussed about Life Positions. Let's talk about Drivers and Ego States in this one.

Drivers

Drivers also play a big role in helping you feel OK or not OK. They are parental messages given to us by our parents or other parental figures in our lives like older relatives, teachers, etc. As the name suggests, they literally start driving us!

Some common drivers are "Please others," “Try hard," “Be Strong," “Be perfect," “Hurry Up," “Try Hard," “Boys never cry.” Sound familiar don't they?

Now each driver has its positives and negatives, it's really in the way you perceive it! For example, the positive of "please others" is that you can establish relationships really fast by pleasing others. The negative on the other hand is that you end up trying to always make others happy and tend to make yourself miserable in the bargain!

So where does the difference lie in the perception of the driver? It's in the life position that you see it from. So if you operate from an (I+U+) position, you will be able to connect with people really fast using this driver. However if you operate from (I-U+), you will land up pleasing others at your own expense. This in turn will take a hit on your self-esteem and you will get stuck in a vicious cycle because you will then try to please others as a means to make yourself  feel good and bring up your self esteem! In this way the driver will really have you  stuck and going around in circles.

“Try hard” is another driver where you keep trying hard all the time forgetting that there are smart ways of doing things and that everything does not need to be done the hard way. It also means letting go if something is not working for a long time.

The flip side of "Try hard" is that it makes you try again and again until you succeed.

Thus identifying one's drivers and the life positions through which you see them from is of utmost importance.  This then enables us to you use the positives of these drivers and diminish their negatives. However it’s important to remember that it's a gradual process and takes time as you are trying to change something that you have been following for a major portion of your life. So don't be harsh on yourself or you will land up pushing yourself to an I am not OK position!

Ego States

As per Eric Berne and Claude Steiner, the 3 ego states are formed over a period of time and we actually operate from either of them in every transaction.

E.g. the Parent Ego state is about what has been told to us by our parents. What we have acquired from our parental figures - the values, beliefs and other things that we swallowed without questioning.

The Adult Ego state is about questioning, inquiring and understanding the reality; keeping in mind the thinking, feeling and behaving. This state depicts a balance. Its the rational or logical thinking state and is an objective state.

The child state is the feeling state. It’s about your own childhood experiences of thinking, feeling and behaving. It feels in the body mainly and is an intuitive thinking state.

Ego states are the building blocks of the personality. Even children have all the 3 ego states in them, however the child ego state is the one that is dominant in children.

The most important thing to understand after you learn about the PAC (Parent - Adult - Child) states is that each state has its positives and negatives and it is up to you to see how you can create a balance between the two.

The further sub divisions of the parent and child state are:

• Controlling Parent
• Nurturing parent
• Free Child
• Adapted Child

Each of these sub divisions too have a negative and a positive side.

E.g. Let’s look at the Nurturing Parent. A negative nurturing parent is over pampering and behaves as a very soft ego state which can actually lead to the people around the person taking undue advantage of the person’s empathy and over sensitivity.

However a positive nurturing parent will always support the people around appropriately. He / She will create an environment conducive to others growth and will also know when to keep a stand as per the situation on hand.

It therefore greatly helps if one can reduce the dominance of negatives of each ego state by increasing the positive side so that one operates from a healthy ego gram. The best part about an ego gram is that it always looks at creating a healthy balance of each state. So you don't need to diminish the negative ego state, just enhance the positive side of the same to balance them out.

So a Controlling Parent needs to ensure that he doesn’t keep controlling all those around them all the time, a Free Child needs to also take responsibility some time and an Adapted Child needs to ensure that he does also do what he feels like sometimes!

Transactional Analysis is thus a beautiful tool to help one with enhancing communication with the self and eventually communication skills with others. It is a tool for enhancing self awareness which in turn helps produce change.

If you feel Transactional Analysis Training can help you in improving your relationship with yourself as well as those around you, do join our Transactional Analysis Workshops.  You can also visit The Yellow Spot website to learn more about the other programs we offer.