Tag: learning

Childlike Learning – Is it a thing of the past?

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn EQ, happiness, learning, Pictures that Speaks, psychology, Relationships, Team ExcellenceLeave a comment

This is a moment from an in-room learning experience pre-pandemic. This a photo taken after an activity related to the ‘Six Thinking Hats’, conducted for one of my clients in Dubai. It now 4 months of online learnings using ‘webshops’, a concept innovated by my team to attempt to create an experience close as possible to the fun and interactive in-room experience.

While some participants who have experienced our in-room and online learning experiences say that they got a similarly impactful experience, my fervent wish, for the sake of the quality of learnings, is that we move back to physical venues as soon as the situation starts permitting us to. Given that life in Sri Lanka is limping back to normal, we have already conducted 3 days of in-room sessions and many more are lined up. I cant tell the impact these have had not only on the participants experience, but also on the quality of our contribution.

Did the Pandemic Stimulate you Intellectually?

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Ecology, EQ, Health Care, IQ, Knowing, learning, Life, Personal Excellence, psychology, purpose, Purpose Quest, Spiritual, Values, World affairsLeave a comment

When the world started changing due to the pandemic it had a big impact on my focus on my intellectual development process. This blog post tells my story and I hope this will help you to reflect on how the pandemic affected your intellectual development.

Image Credit: medspace.com

Let’s start with the question, what is the meaning of intellectual? While different people may make sense of the word ‘intellectual’ in different ways, based on their thinking, to me intellectual is the quality of my thinking and understanding aspects I am concerned with. The stronger my intellectuality becomes,  I tend to understand aspects I am concerned with and the related complexities in a deeper manner. The shift in priorities brought about by the pandemics resulted in some interesting changes to my intellectual development processes.

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Jack of all trades… Master of none …true or false?

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Leadership, Personal Excellence, Spiritual, Team Excellence3 Comments

Image Credits: en.wiktionary.org

I first heard the saying; ‘Jack of all trades, is a master of none’ from my dad. While I took this as face value and later felt it is valuable mindset to have, I now wonder if this is true or false. On one hand it is humanly possible to be the best in all trades as there are millions of them. We would not have the time to master everything in a lifetime or just even explore them. Anyway I don’t think this statement suggests that anyone attempts to be a master of all trades.

We also don’t have the time in our lifetime to be a Jack-of-all-trades as well. But what do you think the original writer meant by the use of the word Jack. If it is the Jack from the pack of cards, then we are referring to the person who does all the work for the King and Queen. Therefore, by doing all the tasks required he learns many things, but will he ever be the master of any of those subjects.

Recounting my experience, I was in the collage rugby, athletic and chess teams. I was also a Boy Scout and I studied the subjects required to be an engineer. I believe  I excelled in the engineering class when I lead a team of my classmates to make a electronic scale in the late 70’s. While it was very primitive and shabby we believe it was one of the first such attempts in Sri Lanka. It was viewed by the then President of the country J R Jayawardena and a later Prime Minister  Ranil Wickremasinghe.

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The teacher will arrive when the student is ready

On By Ranjan De SilvaIn Conference learnings, Health Care, Leadership, Marketing, Personal Excellence, Relationships1 Comment

The month of April 2013 epitomized the caption! Yes there were many including myself who were ready for the teacher. It was a great month of personal growth.

The month started with 60 souls from various organizations and walks of life taking part in the Mastery of Self through Neuro Linguistic Programming [NLP] playshop that was conducted in Sri Lanka [see more details in: http://www.ranjandesilva.net/#!mind-power/cpqz ] . This was the first 2 days and all of them left feeling more valuable than ever before, more empowered than ever before and more purposeful than ever before. They come back for the final 2 days on the 6 & 7 of May.

Then I travelled to Vietnam where I conduct the same session for another 60 souls from Fashion Garments a company of the Hirdramani Group in Sri Lanka. The impact created was the same and I go to Vietnam again to do the final 2 days of the training on the 11 & 12 of May 2013.

From Vietnam I travelled to Dubai to conduct a 2 day training on advanced negotiation skills and a 1 day training in work life balance. While the numbers were around 16 participants in each session, as customary in trainings that take place in Dubai, the impact created for them was tremendous.

After having helped unlock potential of so many souls in the first half of the month, the second half was about me going back to school. Yes I was a participant with 15 other senior executives from the health care industry who took part in a 2 week long intensive leadership development session held by the Samson Global Leadership Academy of the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

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