Kuppulakshmi Krishnamoorthy at WomenTech Global Awards 2020

Automatic Summary

How The Dual Personalities of Work Play Out in Our Lives

Ever experienced a scenario where you have seen two completely different sides of a person at work and off-work? Has it ever made you wonder if you also have two different personalities in the same context? The notion of dual personalities juxtaposes with remote work settings, where a chunk of your home morphs into a piece of your office. This atmosphere gives your family an up, close and personal sneak-peek into your work personality too.

Reflecting on Personal Behaviors and Actions

Every once in a while comes a moment of self-reflection where we wished we could hit the Rewind Button and act differently in certain situations. These moments come in all shapes and sizes: as part of your family or work - be it team meetings or general meetings - where you just wished you could travel back in time and behave differently, more responsibly.

Personalizing the Purpose of Life

Despite working hard every day pursuing our ambitions and goals in various fields, there persists a question deep down in our hearts: "What is really the purpose of my life?" Meanwhile, as our lives get lonely despite the hustle and bustle, the longing for like-minded spirits becomes stronger. We naturally gravitate towards these familiar and friendly personalities - those who we trust for advice and those who radiate warmth and charisma.

Recognizing and Understanding Intuition

There have been moments where we all have experienced unique, indescribable feelings - a tingle in our hearts, butterflies in our stomach, or an uncanny hunch that can be termed as being intuitive. The big question is - is this a skill? Can it be acquired? Can we train ourselves to be better at discerning positive or negative vibes?

The Power of Vulnerability and Grappling with Failures

Many times, our failures give birth to a sense of shame that we are initially not proud of. Gradually, over the years, we encounter works such as that of Brene Brown's on vulnerability and realize the potential of accepting errors and experiencing transformation through vulnerabilities, enhancing our personal connections and enabling personal growth.

The Future of Machines and the Element of Human Bias

Various reports suggest that by 2025, more than 75% of human work will probably be replaced by machines and automated workflows. This interesting yet contradictory development brings us face to face with the influence of human bias in the future created by us. The challenge of reconciling our present and the future we aim to build with the fact that many of us are still biased can be difficult to grapple with.

Diplomacy, Manipulations, and The Hybrid Work Culture

With the increase in remote work, we witness the emergence of a 'casual culture' with informal hierarchies. However, it comes with its own set of problems – lack of respect for individuals' time, incomplete email communication, and sometimes even underestimation of others' experience and work.

Thus, the integration of Emotional Intelligence in what we do, comes into the picture. Emotional Intelligence refers to the capacity to recognize personal feelings and empathize with others in similar situations, thereby aiding in building better relationships and social behavior.

Feel free to use any of these hashtags #womenTechNetwork #Leadership #emotionalintelligence and connect further and delve into a more detailed understanding of these concepts. In a nutshell, the importance of Emotional Intelligence in personal and professional life cannot be underestimated. It calls for a beautiful duet of mind and heart, logic, and feelings all elegantly knit together broadcasting promising transformations and personal growth.


Video Transcription

Yeah, so, hello everyone. I'm so excited to share this presentation, a collection of thoughts and experiences with you all today.And, um, I in, in my daily life, you know, I want you to tell me on chat, whether you resonate with any of what I'm going to say in the next few minutes. Uh There are a lot of times in my life I have looked at managers and people in general at work and wondered whether they have a dual personality. Um, someone who is very different while at work, not very friendly, always interrupting, uh not open to new ideas, but at the same time, if, if you check a little bit into the social media or what they do with the family over the weekends, it's always exciting or interesting to see that.

Um, they are quite warm people, they are very fun, loving, adventurous, they're very protective about their family. It makes me wonder if many of us have a sort of multiple personalities, one catered for work and one that is really outside of work. And it's interesting to see how much of this has changed due to the remote setting, especially when you have to work from home. Uh, a part of home change into work and everyone in the family actually knows, uh, what kind of person you are at work too. Um, there are times when I have reflected on my behavior during a meeting, be it a team meeting or a general meeting where I've, I've let out, um, some parts of me and I've been really angry and I've wished, oh, I could press rewind, the wiser me would uh react or respond in a different way to a certain situations.

Yeah, I'm sure we all have that either in the family or at work. Some of us work really hard. You know, there are the smart workers, there are the hard workers and all of that. But even as we work hard every day in towards our ambition and goal um as women in tech, as entrepreneurs, as start ups. So just starting off, there's always a question hanging on top of the head uh from the bottom of her heart, what is really the purpose of my life? You know, every day seems to be so intense and exciting. At the same time, I quite feel lonely, you know, where are my spirit souls? The kind of people that I resonate with. And there are a bunch of people in our life, you know, we just have to close our eyes and think of them who we naturally gravitate towards always. You know, if there is a problem, you run towards them if you have a question and you can't find answers, you seek their advice. They're so warm and charismatic and accommodative, uh, ex, you know, uh, exuberant and flamboyant, the spotlight is always on them.

You know, you gravitate towards these kind of people. Yeah. Um, I know I am fortunate enough to have worked with people who have been my bosses, my subordinates, my peers. Uh, and there are times when I have wondered, you tell me if you have to um about this certain quality called being intuitive, what's going to happen? Good or bad. There's, there's a little tingle in the heart. There's a little butterflies in the stomach or sometimes even rats running around in the tummy. Uh but there is a certain intuitive feeling, you know, something good or bad is going to happen. I have wondered at many points in my life if this particular uh intuitiveness. Is this a skill? Can this be acquired? Can I become better in understanding uh positive, negative vibes or, or to know physically and from my heart what's going to happen so that I can make better decisions? There are times when you know, we bump into people when we were at work uh or even in events and meetings, you kind of um repel from these personalities for no reason at all. And sometimes you also know why, you know, you're, you're running away from them because they're very rude any kind of conversation with them before, you know, it goes out of hand, it becomes quite argumentative and they are very, very overpowering, not open to ideas at all, especially in the start up world in the tech world.

I know we face a lot of people who fall under, you know, people who we gravitate towards or we run away from. There are times in my life due to several failures due to sudden change of plans. Uh When God disposes some of my nice pitches to him. Uh there is a lot of shame that I remember associating myself with where I'm not really proud of my failures. I'm not proud that I attempted at something I took the effort to try something that's really out of my comfort zone. And much later in life, you know, you bump into works of granny brown and the likes where you understand, there's something called vulnerability and the mistakes that we make and the lessons that the is like a lot later into my life, I realized the power of vulnerability and how I can actually connect with people talking more about my failures than showing off my perfect side.

We also talk about future of machines in the same breadth, these machines, you know, by the World Economic Forum that talk about Fancy reports. Uh by 2025 how more than 75% of human work is going to be made redundant and machines and automation and workflows are going to replace much of our work. Now, interestingly, or contradictory or oxy you can call um you know how you can observe some of these trends where the future is created by us humans. At the same time, the these humans are, we are very much biased, conscious or unconscious. We don't know if we learn certain lessons in life where if we are ready, if there is a green signal to accelerate the present that we have into the future that we want by many of us who are still biased and have not really found the spot. Now, when I think along these lines, you know, there's a lot of uh two sides to the coin that comes into the picture in terms of uh putting life to perspective, how I am at work and how I'm growing into a leader, inspiring people um impacting positively. Now many a times when I walk through this dot Lane, when I have a quiet moment, when I introspect, I realize there's not much, there's very thin difference between uh how you want to be ambitious and people say go reach out for the stars and give your best, grow to your full potential.

At the same time, there are these very same people that dish out philosophical lessons that say, oh, you have to be detached, keep doing your duty, don't really worry about the results. Um You know, they also say there is a very um you know, thin difference for people who know, give back whether they're being nice or they're being kind when they're giving you good feedback, knowing that it's not necessarily going to sound all good or they're going to be nice and please you and they're going to say, oh, you did very well all the time.

And such times, I have wondered in my life if I have taken some of these criticism, feedback, constructive materials, conversations with people. If I have really taken them personally, then I shouldn't. And if I have taken them seriously enough to bring about a change in myself, am I really being self-aware at one point? Or I'm super confident where I really have to make friends with vanity. That's not the favorite end result, right? And there are times when I have uh been through part of meetings, I'm sure you would have to when you don't know if a person is really being diplomatic or they're kind of manipulated where they know the end result of the meeting, this is what they want and they slowly work towards the psychology of every other stakeholder in the room where the end result is something what they want.

And they walk out of the room. I have been witness to several of this in my life and I look forward to you sharing this in chat. If you have specific examples as well, I'll tell you why in a few minutes right there are, especially during this remote setting of work, especially when we are looking at a future of hybrid where I can work from home, I can work from anywhere. Or if there is an office setting, I can still work in this kind of hybrid setting. How informal culture, you know, there is, there is a flat hierarchy. It's slowly morphing into a casual culture where people don't respect other people's time, they don't read your emails in full and respond in full. Or there is this really young generation sometimes, you know, they are confident, they think they know everything and then they come and talk to us sometimes making our work and experience redundant if you know what I mean, you know, it's informal or casual. So before I dive deep into why I am saying these random things, how are we going to connect the dots? I want to give you all a sincere thank you for sitting through this keynote and making an effort for.

We realize I observe how every day there is information exchange before it, it's the same event would have been a a day when we all will be physically present in one room. You can feel, you know, the presence of all of us, the vibes. But now in the virtual environment, it's so easy to access information. At the same time, this information overload, you know, a sort of every time we are bombarded with new things. But if you've taken the time to sit through this keynote and you're making notes and you're going to share with me some of how these points resonated with you. I wanted to first start this talk with a very sincere thank you and thumb in my mother tongue. We say Nanri. So I I give you all a very hearty Nanri for sitting through this talk, right? So the topic I'm going to talk about is how to weave in emotional intelligence in everything that you do, right? Because when we talk about women tech network, more than 15,000 women are part of this network, we talk about our networking skills. We talk about leadership, how uh women are blessed naturally to bond leaders and how we always believe in a growth mindset, especially with entrepreneurs.

And how do we understand this word called coaching, leadership, mentorship and all of that. So before I start, I delayed my introduction a bit, you know, to give you a context of what we're going to talk and why and why is she talking about that? Now, if you look at my transition over the years, I'm going to be 40 in a few few couple of I think in a couple of years, um I am basically a microbiologist and then I became a copy editor and then I became a communication and soft skills trainer. And then I started training people on body language and presentation skills and understanding cross cultural differences. And a little bit of storytelling. And before I knew it, I transitioned from this trainer in an in an it industry to picking up products that are software applications.

And because I am from a non tech background and over the years, I gained some experience and expertise in storytelling. I realized I could bridge the gap between technology on boarding by businesses and how I can work with them in simplifying some of the complexities tech naturally brings with it. So in this process, in my life, of course, there has been several uh failures and life lessons that I've learned from that, that somewhat put me in, in a continuous learning spot or le uh mindset of a learner who gets very excited in learning complex things and finding my own analogy and shouting eureka and these little childlike moments, you know, and um uh in this process somewhere you realize your personality and, and when you talk to you, when you go inward, that you want to give back some of your learnings, and you don't want this young generation as much as you did in the pre internet zone where you can't really find a mentor un unless you're physically connected with them.

So now I do a little bit of mentorship for start ups and I volunteer with some of the uh young leadership associations that are run for nonprofit, some of the women from across the world who have brilliant ideas and just helping them find the best potential. And I also have the Zou for start ups program at Zou. And right now I'm almost at the verge of completing a formal certified program on coaching and training on emotional intelligence. And so in this process of uh failing, the first time I failed was really big when I flunked in math uh in my school finals. And I really didn't know that this failure could add an interesting milestone in my life story where without the twist, you know, what is life. So this gave me that uh platform to tell stories about failures, how I overcame those um times of shame and being feeling left out. So in my own mother tongue, there's this talks called Josh Talks that recorded my, you know, uh verbal acknowledgment of failures in the lessons that I did in, you know, learn from life. And very surprisingly, there were 1 million views within a year of this video being published.

And then it gave me lessons. Why I'm why I'm sharing all of this is there have been more people who have connected with me when I share my failures, when I share my lessons on vulnerability, right? So this has taught me lessons on being self-aware uh in seeking help when I really need it without feeling any shame to understand what failure could do to people around me and not mock at them and really resonate with their life stories and be more empathetic, not just be in their shoes, but walk in their shoes for a mile to really know what they feel.

Comfort zone. What is that? Right? So you understand there is a lot of strength and vulnerability and every time moment to moment you realize you have to find the purpose in your life. Now, when I talk about all of this, given the little span of time we have that, I have to finish my keynote before I even started. I want it will be nice to connect with all of you some of you many via the social media handles. If you can find me and connect with me, I'd be very, very happy to share some more on emotional intelligence and also learn from you all and see what you all do in the tech space. So uh you can use any of these hashtags that women tech network is already using on, on Twitter or linkedin. And then if you find any of the quotes or, or tips that I'm going to share in the next few minutes, use these hashtags and then I will be able to talk to you some more, right? So uh this is Z where I work, I'm not really going to spend a lot of time, but we've been around 24 years uh delivering more than 45 plus software applications with 50 million users across across the world. I have a connected ecosystem.

We work with start ups M SME S and small businesses. Why I am saying this is that because I moved from being a microbiologist into a tech space 100%. Sometimes you know how this outsider, this this imposter syndrome works, but it also has some benefits where it helps you see the, where the gap lies, see where many of us tech people start the narratives, where only we understand it's in our head and the people on the other end, whom we are serving through our tech solutions, whether it's reaching to them in the way it should reach.

So in this process, I realized it's not just IQ every day, it's emotional intelligence. EQ it's also called where there is a beautiful duet of your mind and your heart. There is logic and there is feelings and there is different parts of your brain that come together to serve better, right? So in that process, when you talk about emotional intelligence that was popularized by Daniel Goldman in 1995 it just refers to the capacity where you recognize your own feelings, what you're going through at the moment in order to understand how others would feel in the same situation so that you become better as a person and you become socially better as a person as well.

You can build better relationship. I really love this definition.

Sorry to interrupt you, Ku We're running out of time here. I really love that you shared. Yeah. Already I really love that you shared so many insights and especially sharing your journey and so many things around comfort zone and self awareness and empathy. Um It sounds like we need to have another event with you where you could share more about emotional intelligence. And thanks for sharing your, your handle so people can connect also with you and maybe discuss some topics

in person. Thank you very much. I haven't even be on but I love to answer some questions. And what I would do is I will share a PDF version of my presentation with you all so that you can with me and uh ask me some questions around in your everyday life. Respect the rule that you have. Yeah.

Yeah. And also you can connect with people during networking so they can talk to you one on one. Thank you very much, Ku That was great. Thanks for your energy. I really love that and have a great evening and stay with us as much as you can. Thank you very much.

Bye. Thank you. Bye bye.