"HOPE - AUDACITY - RESILIENCE".....Ultimate need of this hour.

Today, I got an opportunity to attend a motivation webinar facilitated by Mr. Ashish Vidyarthi, the renowned actor and motivation speaker, who has mastered 11 languages to communicate with people. After a long time I was attending such a lovely motivational session. 

Great insights were being shared with real life examples. What I liked the most is his energy, the way he depicted his experiences through stories, it touched every heart who all were there in the webinar. 

Each words were being spoken keeping the the current situations into consideration and to inspire individuals. 
Sharing few key takeaways which I will certainly apply for myself.

He enlightened on 'HOPE', which all of us should have any point of time. 

We always think that we have achieved whatever we wanted to and we get stuck there, but what if a situation comes and knocks you down. Will you not try to turn yourself back and win over it? 

Of course, you will do so. And there comes the HOPE. 

It says 'Hope' is something which will always keep a person motivated and alive. And remember, it not only you should have the 'Hope' but create the hope for others as well. Be 'Kind' to yourself and to the World. You must 'Ignite' people around you and let them discover the 'Opportunities' around them to explore. 

When you keep your 'Hope' strong in your mind, it will push you to have your AUDACITY to achieve what you have been trying. Your audacity will keep your dream alive and for sure it will help you to achieve the dream. Allow you mind to be IGNITED. 
The world is in a different transformation now with uncertainties around. This is a new game with no rules, so let's create the RULE now. Let's make it happen something new - a new beginning of unknown, with your audacity. 

Nothing in this world will be served to you in a platter, It's your 'ABILITY' which will fetch you 'Success'.

Very few individual will have the audacity to re-think themselves, no matter what so ever the situations, be it normal time or in any difficult times. Your audacity will trigger your senses to keep focusing and you must do so for every new dimensions.

But do you think you will then achieve the success easily? 

It doesn't happen in that way..

Because, resistance will come on your way..

Nothing will come to your way easily - and it is true. Take the things as 'Interesting' instead of 'Challenging'. Give a different perspective to the situation with positive mind.

When you are trying to discover yourself for success, you will experience failure. It can happen in many ways. You need to have RESILIENCE. Trigger your inner power, feed your 'good bull' in you and let the success comes out. 

You have to be prepared to do things differently.  Your people, your experience, your connections all have a great value. 

This is a new GAME, which have no rules. Let's create the 'RULES'. 

Rules of exploring the opportunities...

Rules of not being stubborn...

Rules of being kind to others and show gratitude all the time...

Rules of being happy always...

Rules of accepting challenges as opportunities...

Rules of discovering self trying new learning dimensions.... 

And, here I conclude with the key takeaways, HOPE - AUDACITY - RESILIENCE are the key factors which will keep us strong and progressive in life..

EMPATHY wins the Heart....

Empathy...an awesome word, especially for those who listens from heart. But what is 'Empathy'? 

It is the understanding how others feel and compassionate towards them.

The neuroscientists say that it happens when two parts of the brain works together.

Research has shown that the empathy makes people better managers and workers and also better family members and friends. Some people are naturally empathetic than others whereas some just try to be. 

Most of us are surrounded by people who look like us, respond like us, earn like us, spend like us and also have educations like us, yet the people are different in their approach.  

Yesterday, all of sudden I received a phone call from an unknown number and I was bit surprised as just four days before we experienced a super-cyclone 'amphan' which devastated the normalcy of human life; due it's severe damage there was no electricity or mobile network in the entire city for few days. When I received this call I was kind of surprised...

The caller was 'Sharath' on the other end, it took few seconds for me to realized that. 

Sharath and I were working together in my previous organization. One day Sharath came to my office and was crying out loud with his complaints on how his team mates and supervisors were not helping him to learn his work. 

Every time he tried to give his ideas for a task his superiors used to laugh at him and ignored his ideas. Sharath is well educated and well behaved individual, had done his Bachelors in Hotel Management from one of the reputed Hotel School in India. He belongs to the well to do family, nurtured with love, respect and care. 

When Sharath was experiencing the negative vibes from his team members he felt to come and share his sadness with me and he did so many times early, got mentally relieved after getting counselled by me. 

On that very day, he was bit more upset and broken from inside and couldn't resist himself to hold his tears and came to my office, sat. Bursting in tears he said the first sentence, 'Sir, I am going to quit now'. 

I knew him as a strong candidate who learnt from all obstacles and negative experiences. I was bit confused. I requested him to share the facts as what happened with him and he started narrating his week's experience as how he was sidelined by his team, how his credit at work was taken by other team members, how he was ignored by his departmental head and so on...

Knowing him very well, I counselled him for more than an hour. Shared with him my personal failure experiences and how I used to struggle at some point of time which was almost similar like him. I had expressed my care and empathy to him. Magically he started realizing and became determined in his approach. I could see the confidence in him popped up with a smile and determination.  He left my office happily.

When the call came and he said to me, "Sir, can you remember the day when I came to you with lost hopes and broken-heart, that would have been my last day at work, in fact it would have been my last day in this industry (hospitality)".

I acknowledged it with a long 'Yeessss'.

Our conversation was going on with exchanging of our well-beings and the situations in this lock-down period. 

He kept on thanking me for that day and claimed that the day was a turning point in his life.

Lastly, he mentioned a line which was struck in my mind, he said, "Sir, many people talk about being empathetic and give lectures about it but I have experienced what is 'EMPATHY' from you and will never forget in my life".

Sometimes, what we do to others we do not remember, probably it was not that great to keep in memory, but the same can be a memory for others whom you have done good. 

Quoting a great line of Albert Einstein, 'Empathy is patiently and sincerely seeing the world through the other person's eyes. It is not learnt in school; it is cultivated over a lifetime'. 

COVID-19 Awareness Posters....

Keeping the current pandemic situation in mind I have designed few COVID-19 awareness posters for us to to e-circulate among the team members through social media and also to put up on our notice boards ..

These posters can be used by any professional organizations for their team members. The COVID picture can be replaced by the organization logo. 

'God is Everywhere'.....A heartfelt STORY to read

There was one boy who always asks his parents where is God; he wanted to meet God, but parents did not have any answer to give, however they said God's house is too far from his house and it would take long years to reach.

The boy packed his suitcase with twinkies and a six-pack of root beer and started his journey. When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old woman. She was sitting in the park just staring at some pigeons. 

The boy sat down next to her and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink from his root beer when he noticed that the old lady looked hungry, so he offered her twinkie. She gratefully accepted it and smiled at him. Her smile was so pretty that the boy wanted to see it again. So he offered her root beer, and once again she smiled at him. The boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word.

As it started becoming dark, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old woman and gave her a hug. She gave him her biggest smile ever. When the boy opened the door to his own house a little later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, 'What did you do today that made you so happy?' He replied, 'I had lunch with GOD'. But, before his mother could respond, he added, "You know what? She's got the most beautiful smile I have ever seen!".

Meanwhile, the old woman, also radiant with joy, returned to her home. Her son was stunned by the look of peace on her face and he asked, "Mother, what did you do today that made you so happy?" She replied, "I ate twinkies in the  park with GOD." But, before her son responded, she added, "You know, he is much younger than I expected."

Moral of the story is 'God is everywhere. We just need to share our happiness and make others smile to feel him.'

A Heart-wrenching Cyclone, 'AMPHAN'

My friends were saying other day that the year 2020 is the year of 'Nature's Revenge', which is now showing its effects when human being is destroying the nature in all possible form. I also nodded my head with a long affirmative deep breath. 

We started experiencing the COVID situation and its adverse effects globally. Government of all countries are taking several measures to control the spread of COVID virus; but the statistics show a different graph; it is practical and brutal truth. And understanding the depth of the virus infection and its recovery rate, WHO declared the situation as 'Pandemic'. Everyone is scared now to be self-protected from the virus and is maintaining required hygienic measures. The infected and mortality rate of COVID-19 are increasing day by day.

When we all are fighting against this unknown virus, which doesn't even has a vaccine discovered yet, here comes another disaster, to take the depression level a step higher.

The new one is in form of super cyclone, named 'AMPHAN'. It was brooding with low pressure for quite long and was also predicted by the weather experts, but we gave a thought to it as it would also be like the other devastating cyclones happened in past years. Proving it wrong, 'Amphan' lashed on coastal areas of West Bengal and Odisha states (of India) with its ferocious wind and rain on 20th May 2020 (Wednesday). From the moment it made landfall it started proving that it is the more vulnerable cyclone in last 100 years these states ever experienced. As a result millions of trees uprooted, electricity and telephone lines were being shuttered, houses collapsed, daily connectivity got disturbed.  

I was witnessing the devastating power of nature how strong it could be to teach a lesson to human kind. The wind breeze was as ferocious as an injured tiger who was taking his revenge. With in few hours of the storm the areas were changed by look and place as if an elephant came to the paddy field and spoiled the crops from every nuke and corner. 

I personally had several damages in my native house where my parents are living - several large trees were uprooted, some of them hit and damaged the wall, roof top was blown away, entry gate was badly damaged, electrical post fell on the wall blocking the road and created a scared scenario, and many more. 

But among all these, thanks to almighty that we were safe, we could manage to hold ourselves safely for the entire day in a corner of our house and praying God continuously. 

It will take several days to recover from the damages, can also be from months to years, but the moment will not be forgotten.

I have never experienced such devastation by any cyclone ever in my life till date. This will always be remembered with many experiences.

'Water Melon Seeds' - A Lovely Story reflect on our Tradition

Today I am going to share with you how important to have the traditions which we live by. We must understand the myth and realty about them, at least to be wise with them.

I will share an article which I read couple of months back, and it is quite interesting and meaningful for all of us. It was narrated by the Late Hon Former Chief Minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar.

It goes like this............

" I come from the village of Parra in Goa.

My village is famous for its watermelons. When he was a child, the farmers would organize a watermelon-eating competition at the end of the harvest season in May.

All the kids would be invited to eat as many watermelons as they wanted.

Years later, I went to IIT Mumbai to study Engineering.

I went back to my village after 6.5 years. I went to the market looking for watermelons. They were all gone. The ones that were there were so small..

I went to see the farmer who hosted the watermelon-eating contest.

His son had now taken over. He would host the contest but there was a difference, when the older farmer gave us watermelons to eat he would ask us to spit out the seeds into bowl.

We were told not to bite into the seeds. He was collecting the seeds for his next crop. We were unpaid child labors, actually.

He kept his best watermelons for the contest and he got the best seeds which would yield even bigger watermelons the next year.

His son, when he took over, realized that the larger watermelons would fetch more money in the market so he sold the larger ones and kept the smaller ones for the contest.

The next year, the watermelons were smaller, the year later even small. In watermelons the generation is one year.

In seven years, Parra's best watermelon were finished".

From this story, there are few important learnings we can extract..

1. In humans, generations change after 25 years. It will take us 200 years to figure out what we were doing wrong by depleting and destroying the earth through our current practices.

2. We must retain and sow back the beautiful gifts of nature we have today to sustain the livelihood of our generations to come.

3. No matter how much modern we become with current generation, we should never ignore our tradition, it certainly has some deep meaning.

TEAM SPIRIT......A story to share..

Today I am going to share with you an amazing story of 'Team Spirit'.

A businessman once gets stranded in a lonely highway as the tires of his car get stuck badly in a mud pool. He looks around for help and couldn't find anyone for quite long and finally he traced an old farmer. The businessman goes to him asking for help to get his car out of the mud.

Farmer gauges the situation and agrees to help him and says, 'let us take the help of Monty, an old bull at the farm.'

The farmer ties the bull to the car and starts shouting loudly, "JACK, pull...JOHN, pull...FRED, pull...MONTY, pull...'.

As the farmer keeps shouting these words, the bull Monty gets the car out of the pool of mud. The businessman is relieved nut has a doubt in his mind. He thanked the farmer and asked him, "you said the bull's name was Monty, and he was alone, then who were these JACK, JOHN, & FRED?"

The farmer coolly answered, "See, Monty is old and is also blind. He didn't know he was pulling the car alone. The moment, he heard the other names, he thought that he is in a team, and put his best to perform the task".

This story fascinates me always as how Motivation can make an individual to perform at his/her best. It can win in any circumstances. A motivated person will always think positive and look around the situation in positive way.

Hope you like the story..

TRUST... An important aspect in Work Culture......

Last week I was going through an article written by author Brigette Hyacinth, it was on the subject 'TRUST' at work place. How do we define the 'Trust', which can be visible, can be measured and can be felt. And she started narrating her experience through an interaction dialogue. 

As it goes like this....

My new employee asked me one day for time off. I immediately approved it. She was shocked and asked, "Don't you want to know the reason why?". My reply was, "I don't need to know the details. I hired you to get the job done and I trust you to get it done."

You choose how to get your work done. Come to the office fine. 9 am to 5 pm? Fine. Working from home, fine. Leave early, Fine. Work from the garage while they fix your car? Fine.

We are all human. I don't need to know you will be late because of a doctor's appointment, or you are leaving early to attend a personal matter.

It's sad how we have infantilized the workplace much, that employees feel the need to apologize for having personal lives. I am not a clock watcher. I trust you to get your job done. Keep clients happy. I am happy.

The future lies in flexible work patterns.

Couple of years back when I was working for another hotel group in Hyderabad, one day I was in need to leave the office early at 5:00 pm, and while I was punching out on the biometric system, one of my close colleague teased me by saying, 'Oh! You are done with your job so early?' I couldn't reply him in harsh way that moment as I was in serious mood to leave.  Later I was thinking about the people how their mentality is. They don't seem to see the world in different perspective, although they want to have all the facilities and benefits.

I am sure when you do trust on your team members on the basis of their hard work and commitment to responsibilities, you should empower them to be open to you. And that can only be possible by creating the environment of trust.

Gender Sensitization for the Team...

Gender Sensitization may be defined as the awareness brief to behave in a manner which is sensitive to gender justice and gender equality issues. Gender sensitization presides over gender sensitivity, the modification of behavior raised by raising awareness of gender equality concerns. This can be achieved by conducting various sensitization sessions, campaigns, workshops, podcasts, seminars, etc.

Gender sensitization doesn't only mean the women empowerment, it opens up the aspects how should we behave in several situations.

We at Accor, are very particular about the awareness and sensitization to our team members. We ensure all our team members must be sensitized with the concepts and will be clear in their mind. 

In one such occasion, we had our 'Gender Sensitization' workshop for the associates and team leaders, where the team was learning through multiple brainstorming exercises and role plays. 

The essence was conveyed very particularly and was very well understood by the participants.

Industrial Exposure to Frankfinn Students

Being in Hospitality Industry, I strongly believe that the students undergoing hospitality courses must undertake the hotels visit as their regular affair, it will picture them the reality of our hospitality industry. Not denying the fact that, they already have so in form of industrial exposure training, but it is after a year. The students must be exposed for a day to two to go around the hotels and get to know the operations and structures of departments to have a fair idea of what they are up to.

Recently, just before the lock-down started we had a bunch of newly joined students from Frankfinn Institute of Aviation Academy, Hyderabad visited Novotel Hyderabad Convention Centre and HICC for an industrial visit. Good to see the curiosity among students to have better idea of the industry in all form. Today's generation is smart in all aspects.

Loved their smiles through out. They truly depict the upcoming face of industry.

L&D Activity - F&B | Table Laying Competition

Learning and Development is full of excitements, happiness, energy and lots of new things - be it learnings, be it people or be it development. I am blessed to be part of Learning and Development segment and i am thoroughly enjoying it.

Today, I wish to share a throwback moment from February' 2020 when I conducted a learning activity for our Food and Beverage Associates, with the help of my other team members. 

It was the 'Table Laying Competition'. The agenda was to test the knowledge of our associates on 'Menu Planning', 'Misc-en-Place' and 'Table Set up'. The competition was judged by our General Manager, Director- F&B, Residents Manager, and Rooms Division Manager.

Great to see the performance of our associates through this competition, it was indeed a success to test their knowledge. We also understood certain points where the improvements are to be done.

Participants with the Competition Judges

 Participants listening to the instructions carefully

And...the competition began

Ready to be assessed

Giving the final touch to set up

Judging is going on

Debriefing by General Manager

Picture courtesy to SELF

Virtual Session - Post COVID Action Plan | Engineering

As the situation continues, we do not hold ourselves back, instead we are sensitizing our team members of Novotel Hyderabad Convention Centre to take up the necessary steps to 'new normal'.

We have started a new SOP training series for our team members, which need to be followed once the hotel comes back to normal phase. The sessions were being conducted virtually to ensure maximum participation are captured. 

Today it was the 'Engineering SOPs - Post COVID Action Plan' discussed by Mr. Ramesh Singh, Director of Engineering, NHCC and HICC. Prior to the session we had an industry updates shared by our General Manager. He also addressed to the team for our next course of action.

Quite a lot of information were being shared which will certainly enable us to realize the business scenario in upcoming days...

Throwback Post - Welcoming AELP 2020 Batch Candidates..

There is a good part of Accor Brand when it comes to career growth, and that is 'Fast Track Development Programs'. I have seen many other brands but I did not find these opportunities in them, especially when there are some potential candidates who genuinely want to grow in their career with own credibility and performance. They don't need to wait for the traditional appraisal to happen and then discussion with HODs further to have elevated in career. 

Here, at Accor, among many other programs, one is 'Accor Emerging Leaders Program', in short 'AELP'. This program is aimed to develop the future leaders (associates) to become emerging leaders (team leader level). This program is for six months and it runs twice in a year. By default, Learning and Development Head is the program coordinator who ensures to have the thorough selection process to choose the best candidates, through a sequence of selection process.

In 2020, we had five awesome candidates who got enrolled in the AELP program for the first batch at Novotel Hyderabad Convention Centre. They represent F&B Service, House Keeping and Culinary departments. 

The young and enthusiastic candidates have started their fast track journey with us since January 2020. They started learning the required aspects, which are scientifically designed by Accor Academy.

Sharing few glimpses of their program welcoming moment, where the General Manager, Mr. Dayya along with other Department Heads were welcoming them with a Letter, Program Manual and welcome gifts.

 Welcoming Divya Reddy (House Keeping)

 Welcoming Gaurav Kishore (Culinary)

 Welcoming V. Shiva Kumar (F&B Service)

 Welcoming Lila Vinod (F&B Service)

 Welcoming Kuluru Rajasekhar (F&B Service)

 Candidates with the Leadership team