Cultiv8 Pte. Ltd.

15/05/2022

02/05/2022

Selamat Hari Raya and Eid Mubarak wishes to all our Muslim clients, partners and friends, who celebrate today, and advanced wishes to those celebrating tomorrow.

03/04/2022

Ramadan is an important month for all Muslims. A month of abstinence, restraint, and self-reflection.

We wish all our Muslim clients, partners and friends a blessed Ramadan!

29/03/2022

It may seem intuitive, and probably so for many, but to ask great questions requires a little more deftness and skill.

This article offers guidance on how we can frame questions to reap the most benefits for your meetings. Here are some points distilled from the article:

💡Don't ask, don't get
• Be a good listener, ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.
• E.g. “What activities do you like? Do you prefer reading, cooking or exercising?”

💡Ask many questions
• During a job interview, ask questions about the interviewer, the organisation and the work.
• This makes the interviewer feel more engaged and more likely to view you as a favourable candidate also helping you predict whether the job will provide satisfactory work.
• Asking questions like “What am I not asking you that I should?” Can signal competence, build rapport and unlock key pieces of information about the position.

💡Conversational goals matter - Competitive vs. Cooperative conversations
• Competitive conversation tactics when faced with a partner that is reluctant to share and may even lie:
- Ask direct yes or no questions and detailed follow-up questions (even if they’re redundant).
- Frame tough questions using pessimistic assumptions, e.g. “We’ve experienced some headwinds in sales, right?” To reduce the likelihood of respondents lying.
- Ask the most sensitive question first. Subsequent questions will feel less intrusive, making the respondent more forthcoming.

• Cooperative conversation tactics when faced with friendly colleagues who may shy away from conflict or hesitate to share bad news:
- Ask open ended questions to draw out negative feedback e.g. “If you were to play devil’s advocate, what would you say?”
- Begin with least-sensitive questions to build rapport, and escalate slowly.

💡Knowing when to keep questions open ended
• Open ended questions allow room for discovering new information, and prevent the conversation from feeling like an interrogation.
• It also prevents bias and manipulation.
• However open ended questions are not recommended when you are in a tense situation or are dealing with people who tend to keep their cards close to their chest.

💡Get the sequence right
• The optimal order of your questions depends on the circumstances.
• During tense encounters, ask tough questions first. People are more willing to open up when questions are asked in decreasing order of intrusiveness.
• However if the goal is to build relationships, the opposite approach — opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly — seems to be the most effective.

💡Use the right tone
• People tend to be more forthcoming when you ask questions in a casual way rather than in an official tone, and when given an escape hatch or “out” in a conversation.
• E.g. if they are told they can make changes to their answers at any point, they tend to open up more — even though they rarely end up making changes.
• This explains why brainstorming sessions are productive in teams and group settings.

💡Pay attention to group dynamics
• When one person starts to open up, the rest of the group tend to follow suit, vice versa.

💡The best response
• Both parties must find balance between privacy and transparency. They need to be in sync for the conversation to be successful.

Albert Einstein’s famous quote is “Question everything.” In conclusion, good questions and thoughtful answers foster smoother and effective interactions, strengthen rapport and trust, and lead groups to discovery. Therefore having a power that goes far beyond matters of performance.

Link to article: https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions

Most leaders need to get better at it.

22/03/2022

What are some of the trends shaping the world of work in 2022 and beyond?

Finding the balance between WFH and WFO will increasingly be critical, especially in retaining talent and workers.

The pandemic has made us adaptable and used to WFH. Yet we need the physical connection, important in establishing work relationships and solving problems. What is the right mix? How can we optimise to get the most out of a hybrid environment?

Managing in the new endemic world will be the next challenge for managers. How do can leaders and managers create a work environment that ensures wellness, health and inclusion without compromising output?

The 11 trends in this article sheds some light to the questions above.

Link to article:
https://hbr.org/2022/01/11-trends-that-will-shape-work-in-2022-and-beyond

After two years of disruption, volatility will only continue to increase.

15/03/2022

At work, we constantly have meetings and presentations. Ever wonder how to have successful conversations in your organisation?
Knowing how to ‘read the room’ is an important skill. Here are some key pointers.

#️⃣1️⃣ Observe
- Paying attention to people’s body language and facial expressions will give you information you need to interpret the group dynamic.

#️⃣2️⃣ Listen
- In the conversation, take frequent pauses to really think about what the other person is saying. Be present. Be engaged. Make eye contact. Make the other person feel heard and confident that you are in the moment together. Try asking open ended questions.

#️⃣3️⃣ Interpret your observations
- Generate hypotheses about what’s going on. Keep your emotions in check, remember that the emotions you perceive around you are not personal.

#️⃣4️⃣ Check your hypotheses
- Check your understanding with a trusted colleague or mentor, continue to be open to what you’re seeing and sensing so that you don’t fall prey to confirmation bias.

#️⃣5️⃣ Put your perceptions into practice
- Pay attention to what’s not being said. Use humour or empathise with the group to shift the emotional reality of the room. Determine who in the room has the ability to lighten the mood.

Link to article ⬇️

https://hbr.org/2018/05/tips-for-reading-the-room-before-a-meeting-or-presentation?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=LinkedIn&tpcc=orgsocial_edit

What is your strategy reading the room before a meeting or presentation?

How to increase your social awareness.

08/03/2022

01/03/2022

Love this post by Adam Grant.

📌 Why do we follow some leaders and not others?

📌 Why do we go-the-extra-mile for some?

Leadership is not about titles, eloquence, charisma or intelligence. It is about the ability to earn the respect of those you serve and ultimately having them WANT to follow you.

What do you think makes a leader?

🇺🇦 Zelensky’s leadership stands for more than charisma and courage: https://lnkd.in/dGZrbDg4... 728 comments on LinkedIn

22/02/2022

“Pokémon GO motivated so much exercise—more than other exercise apps—because it relied on people’s intrinsic motivation. It turned walking into a game.”

We’ve all heard about and how it and action. It is no wonder that gamification or games have become effective tools for and driving change. By tapping on fun and enjoyment, we invariably trigger our intrinsic motivation to complete what might otherwise be a boring, repetitive and laborious activity.

In this article, the author shares 3 tips you can take to “gamify your life”, but they can be equally applied at , making work fun, and .

💡 Create “minigoals”. Small yet achievable goals appeal to our need for instant gratification, making an activity and task motivating. It encourages you to do more, and indirectly energises. You could inject small rewards along the way as you achieve specific milestones to further enhance the gratification effect.

💡 Combine with something fun. Blend the task or work with something that you enjoy (e.g. listening to background music). Combining an activity with something you enjoy immediately converts what might be boring or laborious to something motivating.

💡 Reframe your perception. Reframe how you think of a task. If you think its boring, its probably true. Reframe your mind and come up with how and why the task you are working on can be fun, and enjoyable.

Go ahead. Try gamifying your work and life.

Have a fun filled week ahead!!



Link to article:

Want to achieve your goals? Have fun on the way.

15/02/2022

The cost of putting a and workshop is not just what you pay but the of the staff attending the course, the time it takes to organise, and all the time involved forgoing other work.

This article shares some very useful ideas you can adopt to bring relevance in your next learning intervention, but below are three points we have extracted that we like the most.

📌 20/80 Rule – focus on the 20% that is likely to be used 80% of the time.

📌 Make it real – Customise the role plays, lexicons and language used in your industry. This makes it “personal” to the learner.

📌 Post Training Follow-ups and support – Implement post training follow up sessions that could be in the form of coaching, or peer learning circles, fire-side chats, where learners come back to reflect how they have applied the learning. This helps in knowledge and skill retention.

should not be just about collecting certificates. It should be able how a learner can be a better person, and where he becomes a valued contributor to the organisation.

&D

Retaining knowledge is just as important as learning it.

11/02/2022

So much has been said about the need and importance of skill and knowledge. Yet the challenge hirers, and come to us with are problems related to . People problems invariably requires to solve.

we hear frequently, though not exhaustive, include:

📌 “we need to work better as a team”
📌 “we need to improve negotiation”
📌 “the presentation wasn’t clear, I didn’t get the message conveyed”
📌 “we need to ‘sell’ our ideas better to our users”

They are all related. They are not just the skills that will make a difference in improving user and stakeholder engagement but is probably the difference between an individual contributor, a manager and eventually a leader.

What is your soft skill development strategy?

Your next boss will look for you to demonstrate these attributes during your interview.

07/02/2022

Thank you Instarem for giving us the opportunity to the for 2022. We are pleased to have played a positive role in this journey and grateful for the wonderful quote below.

“Instarem engaged Cultiv8 to facilitate our FY2022 planning workshop. We were impressed with their consultative approach, professionalism, value-adds, and adaptability. Although Cultiv8 came in without extensive Fintech experience, they quickly understood our domain and brought in suitable trainers. Together, we established a structure to streamline our objectives for 2022. In addition to providing a great framework, Cultiv8 was flexible and proactive. They ensured that sessions worked across global time zones, and post the initial kick-off, they conducted sessions to ensure plans were cascaded across the organization well into January this year.” – Ho Chee Wai, Head of Neobanking - Instarem

#2022