A Conversation with Prasad Kaipa
April 2, 2002
Prasad Kaipa, based in Silicon Valley, is the CEO of SelfCorp inc.--- a company that focuses on aligning individual and organizational objectives. He is trained as a physicist who joined Apple in international marketing and then found his passion in Apple University. He has been a consultant to companies like Boeing, HP, Cisco, Xerox, Ford, and British Aerospace. His work has focused on executive development, executive coaching and approaches that draw out many aspects of his clients around leadership, personal mastery, dialogue and learning. He can be reached at pkaipa@selfcorp.com.
RV: I understand that you've been implementing a new approach to developing leaders. Is that correct?
PK: Yes, Russ. I've been working on helping leaders tap into their genius, either individually or collectively in teams.
RV: Help leaders tap into their genius: what does that mean?
PK: We operate at sub-optimal levels most of our lives. This is well researched. We can produce results many times more effectively, effortlessly and creatively than we usually do. It requires that we begin to tap into our natural genius, inner strength and source of energy and passion. That is what I am focusing on.
RV: Passion isn't a word we hear very often in business. Tell us more.
Entrepreneurs use that word a lot in the Silicon Valley but once they build bigger companies passion seems to disappear from them also. Much of the time organizational objectives are not aligned with those of individuals who work in that organization. That leads to people just doing their job without any passion or connection. When people are not doing work that they are passionate about, they rarely have clarity about what they can truly deliver in terms of outcomes and how they change during the process. We operate and deliver like machines. It is very hard to come up with high customer satisfaction, innovation and new knowledge creation when we operate like machines.
I have found a way to help them tap into their genius. It has to do with helping them align their hearts, heads and actions in a metaphoric sense. Passion and commitment are connected to the heart. Creativity and innovation are connected with the head. Value creation and leadership are connected with actions taken by the body. I focus on helping my clients align themselves. They tap into the natural genius that many were unaware of.
When they make their tacit knowledge explicit (as is said in knowledge management) they begin to discover new capacity for action and for greater things. This capacity is normally blocked in us by our assumptions, mindsets, and attitudes, individually and in teams. This work itself is not new. I just found a different way to speak about it and package it to make it more relevant and effective for 21st century organizations.
RV: How do you work with them? Do you coach them? PK: Some executives come to me saying, "I want to get this done," or "I want to learn strategic thinking," or "I would like to be more creative." They have more clarity and awareness of what is missing but they don't have access to themselves so that they can develop those capabilities. They have what you might call, the knowing-doing gap. In some other cases, executives come and say that they want their project teams, product development teams or management teams to be more effective and come up with breakthrough innovation or results.
I first look for fit with each potential client. If what they want is incremental changes, I am not the right person. There are many good consultants and coaches who can work on team building and executive coaching for performance improvement. If they are asking questions like "Now what?" or "What is next?" because they have come to a fork in the road and have no idea where to go or if they want to find their next significant step, then I can help them. I am only good in help create significant shifts in their effectiveness, productivity, creativity and passion.
So, let us say that there is a fit. If it is a team that they want me to engage with, I do a 360-degree assessment of individuals and the team. I need a base line to know where they are. Then I propose a multi-month engagement that includes one two-day workshop every quarter, half a day action learning sessions or team coaching sessions every month, one hour phone coaching sessions every week (who ever needs it can utilize part of that hour). The team members bring one project that is personal that they would like to work on in addition to the team project that they are focusing on. By the end of that period--I typically recommend a one-year engagement--these people develop individually and as a team. It takes time for real change to happen. They produce significant results both in their work and personal domains as measured by the success of their projects. The work we do during workshops every quarter is the alignment process.
I do four workshops and the titles are 'Reinvesting in Yourself: Clarifying your Personal Strategy,' 'Harvesting Your Creativity,' 'Igniting Your Passion and Commitment,' and 'Unleashing Your Leadership.' Each of them focuses on finding and helping people to bridge the gaps in direction, head, heart and action.
RV: How do you work with people in these workshops?
PK: For example, "Reinvesting in Yourself" is about clarifying your purpose and goals. Every year we set new goals. We say, "These are the resolutions that I am making for the year 2002." It may take a week or a month for us to say, "You know, I'm not going to be able to follow these resolutions." Then, there is resignation. There is a certain sense of frustration because of not being able to keep our word.
RV: There is a sense of lowered self-esteem or loss.
PK: Exactly. We hesitate to make and keep commitments to other people, because we're not sure that we can honor them. Then come the pressures, rewards and punishments for keeping or not keeping our promises and commitments. Over time it is easy for us to become externally driven, not internally motivated. This is a common pattern many of us go through.
I work with participants to clarify their projects both personal and work related. I have a methodology that allows them to identify their larger purpose that I call their North Star. In moving towards their North Star, they can reframe their projects and goals. We also look at what blocks their progress towards successful completion. They identify their Core Incompetence. This is where their foot is nailed to the floor, where they keep trying to make changes and are not able to. It haunts them again and again in different and unrelated areas and tasks. Until they resolve the polarity between North Star and Core Incompetence, they want to go towards their projects and goals but they don't make much progress. This is what stops people from keeping their New Year's resolutions. We do major work in this area during the two-day workshop.
Participants also identify an energy trigger and energy drain. An energy trigger is something that rejuvenates them after a tough or stressful day. It helps them chug along toward their larger goal. An energy drain slowly but steadily wears them down. They identify ways to become more vigilant about their drains and create an alarm system before they get completely drained of their energy. Developing awareness of their drains and triggers allows participants to be in the moment and pay more attention to their internal processes and external drivers.
RV: You help them get in touch with what is important to them internally, and then begin to look at how they are engaged with the system around them to make that happen?
PK: That's correct. To get in touch with oneself internally one may also need external feedback. Many times we are very unaware of what is going on with us and everybody else gets it before we do. I work with a 360-degree personal assessment. It is not used to identify which type they belong to as with MBTI. Rather, I do developmental assessment that helps them identify where they are, where they can go and what would be the next level of capacity and competency they can grow into.
RV: Do you have a conceptual model or framework for this developmental assessment?
PK: Yes, I do. The framework is based on three basic moods that we act from and six competencies through which the moods can be assessed. I use moods in the sense of attitudes. For example, when I started this phone call you greeted me with such a warm "Hi!" and when I responded back in the same perky way it kind of cheered both of us up. That "Hi!" set the context for this conversation. It is not the conversation itself but the mood we are in to have the conversation.
Before looking at what an executive does, we explore the mental state, the space from which he or she acts. That state is what I am calling a mood.
RV: Do these moods correspond to anything like pitta, kapha, vata, traditional Ayurvedic ways of thinking about energy?
PK: It is definitely related to energy, and yes, there is a correlation with body types of vata, pitta and kapha of Indian medicinal system, Ayurveda. I won't elaborate the connection between them, if you don't mind, at this juncture. I would just say that both are integral, holistic ways of looking at how your nature manifests through different body responses, words and behaviors. It is about the three moods you can act from.
There are also six different components in any action you take. When you focus on those six components you can develop competencies in getting things done effectively. When you map three moods onto these competencies then you have a 6X3 matrix to guide taking meaningful and effective action. My 360-degree assessment tool is based on this 6X3 matrix and helps people to know developmentally where they are, where they would like to go and what the gaps are. Once they note their gaps and identify the steps they would like to take, they can prioritize. That is where coaching and support comes in.
RV: There is a difference between trying to support people, trying to provide people with paths to develop routes to new levels vs. trying to help them really deepen and get in touch with where they are at, celebrate that and use it effectively. How would you see the work that you do through that point of view?
PK: It is consistent with deepening and jumping to new levels. Both happen in our work. We do help people emerge into a new level of competence and capacity. By discovering their own dominant mood and the limitations of that mood, they deepen their awareness of the present moment. By paying attention to the present moment, they begin to notice their own blocks, perspectives and points of view that are limiting their capacity and their passion. That deep awareness of themselves frees them and they make a shift in awareness. Deepening awareness also allows one to access a whole new source of energy. Our normal energy triggers and sources are mostly external: food, sleep, drinks, exercise, and enjoyment. Awareness allows us to tap into that energy source that is connected with our generative selves, natural genius and creative spirit. They have always been there, but we might have had infrequent or no access before. This connection with our natural genius allows us to make a developmental jump to the next level of capacity. It is as if we got bigger batteries in our power source. The developmental jump to the next level is like Ken Wilbur's notion of holonic jumps. Correspondingly, my developmental framework provides an opportunity for a transformational shift.
Each of the three moods allows us to access a different kind of energy. We can shift from one mood to another. It is our choice to act from one mood or another. The more we tap into our natural genius, the more we can celebrate who we are and our developmental experience. We can also engage with opportunities with more freedom and clarity.
RV: As long as you have introduced the notion of the holon, it sounds like the moods are pretty much upper left quadrant. They get manifested in upper right quadrant. How is your perspective engaged with the lower left and lower right quadrants?
PK: Very good question. The moods, values and intentions are upper left quadrant material. Manifesting behavior is in the upper right quadrant. These two quadrants together, define our personal field. If we have less of a gap between our intentions and actions, our authenticity is high and we are aligned leaders.
The moods are dependent on the environment that we experience, the culture that falls in the bottom left quadrant. The social system, the organization, represents the bottom right quadrant. Together, they represent the organizational field. The effectiveness of the organization depends on the alignment between its culture and its system. If they are misaligned, the organization cannot easily deliver on the promises it makes. The objectives it sets remain as New Year's resolutions because its culture does not support those objectives and tacitly creates conditions for them to fail.
When the individual notices the gaps in the organization and brings his or her own actions to bridge the gaps, then that individual grows rapidly in the organization. One has to walk carefully while doing this because culture can slowly but covertly make the individual very ineffective by sabotaging his/her work. It is about the strength of the individual field vs. organizational field. When they are both aligned, the organization and the individual both grow by leaps and bounds. When they are misaligned, one has to make choices. Moods and the assessment help to identify and understand these gaps and fields.
For example, if I were to call you up one day in a very excited, really celebratory mood and catch you at a bad time, chances are that the conversation will ground me in your reality and bring me down to a more sober mood. Hopefully though, you would have caught some of my energy and you would become less attached to your somber mood. We acknowledge our interconnectedness in the way in which our psychic energy--our relational energy--gets shared. This is the culture, the lower left quadrant that will interact with what one brings from the upper left.
If a leader is strongly grounded, she might be able to shift the direction of the culture in an organization to be aligned with her own. For example, Carly Fiorina did that recently with Hewlett Packard. HP is known to have a very strong culture called the HP Way and when Fiorina suggested the merger of Compaq and HP, the sons of two founders opposed her and made the merger process much more difficult than expected. But she brought all her energy and shifted the outcome to her favor and ultimately won support for her merger from the shareholders and the courts. Not many people can do that with a well-known and well-respected organization with a strong culture like HP. It requires a deep commitment and enormous internal strength to be able to do that. Sometimes the culture is too strong and will influence the leader to either get out or let go of the effort. That is the way in which the moods get affected by the environment. During those times, if the leader lets go and does not take it personally, then she can learn from the process.
Before the leaders take action they tap into the culture. They prepare the culture for appropriate action. There is an attitude with which they take action that either allows others to join them or get out of the way so that they don't get hurt. Those actions produce results for the social system, the organization or corporation. So what I am proposing has components in all the four quadrants. That is why I use the phrase "holonic jump."
RV: When you're working with an individual leader, you're explicitly exploring relationships among the quadrants, right? What it is you mean by leader or leadership?
PK: I'm looking at a leadership as a certain "field." I call it a capacity. There are people who are "leaderful," if I use the word Joe Raelin uses: he talks about leaderfulness. I like what he does very much.
Leadership is like an ocean and some people seem to be more aquatic than others. They have grown in that field called ocean--leadership ocean--and they have access and innate capability to lead in a natural way. Some others live on the ground, the solid earth of management. Some of them might have an affinity for management yet they start swimming in the leadership ocean, snorkeling and diving because the organization requires them to or the context demands them to. They develop comfort in the field of leadership and become leaders also. So leaders are born or developed.
There is a third kind of people. They can get into the leadership ocean, but it is not the field they are very comfortable with. They are not leaders innately and don't have the comfort to learn how to lead. They work with the leadership and other leaders, but they are managers and focus on the management aspects of their work. They are very much needed and there is nothing wrong with management.
I look at leadership as a holon. I use a more biological term: leadership DNA. I do not mean it is created from bottom up as a building block but as representation of the essence. The holon is a fundamental building block of leadership DNA. There are four essential elements of leadership DNA. One is the leadership role, the upper right quadrant consisting of individual behavior.
RV: In my work I describe those roles as members of a group, contributors to an organization, players on a team, and entrepreneurs in an enterprise. That's what you talk about as roles?
PK: That matches my understanding. People are how they show up, how they act. I am not talking about their intrinsic intentions, but their leadership behavior. That is upper right, quadrant.
The second part of the DNA is leadership opportunity. This is tacit/individual and belongs in the upper left quadrant. That is where personal leadership shows up based on intentions, moods, values and attitude. I call it a leadership opportunity for the leader to step into. Sometimes people step into it and take advantage of it and sometimes they don't.
RV: Values, beliefs, moods, assumptions, perspectives and attitudes define opportunity. This is the meaning-making dynamic for an individual. The opportunity is something that is contained within the individual?
PK: That is right on. If I assume that I'm a victim, then I won't go very far. Right? If I assume that I am making a choice I can step into the opportunity.
Mahatma Gandhi was a person who took the opportunity to be a leader. Even though he had the opportunity, he did not aim for ending apartheid in South Africa. He took the opportunity in India to step in and move to the next level. That is a personal choice that leaders make. The choice becomes available when the leader sees opportunities, not predicaments.
The third quadrant is intrinsic/collective, the lower left quadrant, and is what I call a leadership context. The context is set by the culture. The culture allows for certain kinds of leadership to thrive or to die.
RV: Context is defined by collective meaning making based on values and all the other elements of culture present in that particular situation?
PK: Yes. There are collective values, assumptions and ways in which the culture has evolved. It is tacit all the way. When there is an opportunity that shows up in the collective way, it becomes a context for somebody to step into, step out of or to make a difference. For example, there is the Palestinian-Israeli situation. It is a lose-lose proposition at this moment. The escalation in conflict always takes place when there is no way in which people can step out of the role that they have taken.
I'm not making a judgment about either Arafat or Sharon. They have certain roles that they have to play. They have to please the system that they are in and their constituents decide whether they are going to represent the system or not. The question is will Sharon and Arafat be able to go above the fray and beyond the role of being political leaders? Will they be able to go above the system and take an opportunity to provide leadership or not in bringing lasting peace in the Middle East. When individuals are ready but the context is inappropriate, they fail. The context may be ready, but if there is no individual who is willing to step into that opportunity and take on a leadership role---that would be very sad because lot of people suffer. That's the third quadrant.
The fourth quadrant, lower right, is what I call the leadership system. So the leadership system represents the boundaries and practices and explicit rules to produce the end results agreed upon. It's the manifestation part.
RV: Within your model, do you have a developmental framework?
PK: Yes, It involves the interaction between the individual field and the collective field. There is developmental opportunity for the individual to emerge as well as for the collective field to evolve. The interaction between the two, what is explicit and what is implicit in the interaction have to be understood meaningfully for the development to occur. My approach and the moods assessment are based exactly on this particular challenge. We need to give leaders appropriate feedback so their roles become clear in the organization, opportunity shows up as a possibility and the context is clear where they need to make a difference. Then they can see the outcomes that they would need to create by shifting their action or their attitude that will result in different action. Each individual and organization is a living system and has its own DNA though it is mostly tacit. It is to our advantage to map and understand our DNA, our essence, so that we know what makes us tick and how we can ignite our natural genius whether individuals or organizations. Once you you're your DNA, it becomes easy to distinguish where you shine, market your products and services effectively and brand yourself uniquely. In other words, you have opportunity to lead because leadership ultimately is a value creation process. If we know more about ourselves, we create higher value. Otherwise, we just keep doing what we are doing expecting different results. That is the definition of Insanity!
RV: So, within that context, do you have a developmental framework?
PK: Yes. It's in it is that interaction between the individual and collective contexts. There is something about the explicit and implicit that people need to work with, so my approach and the moods assessment are based on exactly this particular predicament that people have got. So we need to give them appropriate feedback in such a way that their role becomes clear, opportunity shows up as a possibility, and the context is clear where they need to make a difference. They can see the outcomes that they would need to create by shifting their action. By shifting their attitude it will result in different action. So that's where I can describe the three moods and the six competencies which will go with them.
RV: Can you tell me in terms of the three moods and six competencies are these graduated in terms of some set of categories of stages or are they simply more or less on a continuum?
PK: The three moods are graduated, if I understand how you are using it.
RV: As in the holarchy, let's say.
PK: These are three different holarchy levels. There is a red mood, green mood and blue mood. This is not to confuse it with Spiral Dynamics, but that's how I named them. The Sanskrit names for them are vata, pitta and khafa. Those are the three levels.
The competencies are within each of those levels. The six behaviors and six attitudes can show up at each level of the moods. It's like a Maslovian hierarchy the six competencies.
RV: Let's go back to the three moods: red, green and blue. It might be useful to describe what each of those moods are and I'd also like you to talk about the developmental relationship among the moods? In other words, is one of these moods more sophisticated or spiritual or complete than any of the others?
PK: The blue mood is more fundamental, and it does deal with security and safety concerns. It is connected with procrastination, because we want to just enjoy whatever we are doing a little bit longer. Or we want to get the maximum out of whatever that we are experiencing so we may be late doing something else. At the same time we focus on making sure that things happen in an appropriate way. So the blue mood represents safety, security and a certain grounding to the individual. It is a grounding mode, always checking and making sure that the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. The blue mood has a natural pull to it, doing the minimum that needs to be done, because it always enjoys what it is doing. It is not very active. It is like a disengaged activism. Energy is low. Energy is primarily for maintenance, for keeping one's word and just getting things done. Otherwise it is about sleeping, enjoying, doing what we're supposed to do and having fun with it. The blue mood is about what we need at a fundamental level for each of us to be able to celebrate and enjoy what we have. So this is the foundation mood.
Above is the red mood. In this mood you increase your level of competency, when you experience boredom. You are willing to take on a challenge. You begin to distinguish yourself to be above and beyond everybody else. This is where there is a true opportunity for people who want recognition. They become very passionate. They tap into some inner values. They tap into certainty. They get connected with something: a larger cause, a clear purpose. Then they become very energetic and passionate. They become extremely engaged and they begin to look at the whole world through that set of glasses. These are the evangelistic leaders.
RV: They are really very focused.
PK: Yes, it is very focused. The only difficulty may be that they are so focused they are not able to let go easily. There is a passionate engagement with everything.
RV: Then the focus becomes diffused because it isn't channeled.
PK: Yes. They go through the ups and downs of mood swings. They go to the extremes of complete commitment or no commitment. Their thinking is either/or. They say, "I'm not going to let you convince me that this is not workable. I'm going to show you that it can work." There is a certain ego attachment.
These people have a lot more ego than the blue people. Blue people are willing to just get the job done, not read about whether they got their name mentioned or they got recognized. They say, "Hey, I got it done. I got paid. I don't care what you want to do with it." Whereas the red people say, "I want it! I want my name to be associated with it! I want to leave a legacy!"
RV: You're using the expression red people and blue people. May I assume that you mean people who are engaged in a red mode or a blue mode as opposed to putting people into boxes? I find we are too quick to fall in the convenience of labels.
PK: Thank you for catching that. There are no red people. There are no blue people. There is no box into which you can put people. We can say there is a dominant red mood or blue mood. Everyone of us have got all the three moods.
When I have my red mood to be the dominant mood in my actions and competencies it is where I am coming from. Then I become much more passionate, much more blinded, much more intense.
RV: What about green?
PK: The green mood is a balance with red being one extreme and blue being the other extreme. We are challenged to get to our balanced state, to be able to dynamically be in a both/and position. There we are engaged in the process but not engaged just in the outcome. We are passionate to a limit and able to receive feedback when we are in the Green mood. When we are in the green mood we are appropriately engaged and our energy is inviting.
Red energy is very intense energy. Others react, "Wow! Either I need to buy into it or I need to push it away." Blue energy is a low energy state. When we are in a Green mood, energy is appropriately increasable and decreasable. There is an invitation to others that goes with the green mood.
RV: Are you suggesting that in the green mood you can tap into the red or blue energy at will, but in Blue or Red that is more difficult to do?
PK: That's exactly correct. As a matter of fact, the most distinguishing factor of the Green mood is that it has a choice to tap into both the Blue and the Red. There is a balanced perspective for making choices based on values, not just based on ego or comfort.
RV: Then the developmental challenge is being able to acknowledge, experience and recognize the Red and Blue energy that we have and to be able to transcend and include that into a place of Green. The higher, more developed level is Green.
PK: Definitely. And we want to go beyond that. We do not want to be distinctly in a Green mood. We want to be above any of these moods and be truly mindful in the moment and truly open with no one energy dominating. We are truly free and open.
RV: So it's about choice?
PK: It's the freedom to make a choice. It is about where people can grow into. See, one great thing about this is that you can change these moods. You can move the moods and you have the freedom to shift from one mood to the other. We do that all the time, unconsciously. By differentiating these three moods farther into six competencies, I'm providing ideas for how to change moods, how to work with them and how to move to the next level.
RV: Do you care to share what the six competencies are?
PK: Sure. One is perspective. It is the point of view with which we engage. Like some often say, "The environment and nature's sustainability? Of course! We want to be really appropriate in our use of resources." That is a green perspective.
The red perspective says, "I understand about sustainability but, you know what? It is going to be too much work right now for me to do the recycling and go dump it. My office doesn't do recycling, so I'm going to let it go. I believe in those, but it doesn't work for me."
The blue perspective is, "If somebody is doing it, I will do it. But I'm not going to go out of my way." So the Blue perspective is that right now this is what I have and this is the practical, tangible short-term result. So blue will go for a here-and-now perspective, based on the past, the amount of work that they need to do, safety and security.
The second competency is how you choose action. What criteria do you use? What moods do you draw upon?
The third is, once I choose a certain action, how do I perform that action? What kind of an agent am I? If I am representing you, do I represent it respectfully what you want. I sometimes call this doeship. Each mood has a different style of doership. The Red approach would be like a football player celebrating and feeling the ego that I could do it. I did it!
The Green approach is that I'm supposed to do it. I was in the right place at the right time. If I'm able to sell something, for example, so easily, that means the material and the products that you are asking me to sell are very good. It is selling itself. I'm bringing my own stuff and am glad. At the same time there is a lot more than just me doing it. That's the green perspective.
The blue perspective is that you asked me to do it. If you can find somebody else that would be great. If you can't, I will do it. This is what you need to get it done? I will get it done. Done. But no thinking and no ego or no responsibility or accountability is involved. Just finishing the task becomes more important than producing the results or following the process.
Perspective, action and doership: this is what you might call the anatomy of work or anatomy of leadership. Those pieces are the anatomical parts of being able to make the changes.
The fourth competency is discrimination. It is the decision-making capacity or intelligence which helps you make the appropriate decisions at appropriate times. You might call it discrimination or intelligence. Leaders have to distinguish themselves by the kind of decisions and intelligence they bring to their positions. There could be green, red and blue in it.
The fifth competency is the will and fortitude. It is like persistence. Once you take on a job, how persistent are you to get the job done? Are you looking at the spirit behind the work, or are you looking just at the action. Jim Collins who wrote the book Good to Great, talks about Level 5 leadership and he says humility and the darkest determination are characteristics.
RV: You're seeing a correlation between certain of these competencies and the levels of leadership that Jim Collins talked about?
PK: Yes there is. And I have to do more work to take it to the next level. But definitely there is a correlation. Also John Adams told me two things when I talked about six competencies. One is that these six competencies match very well with what he found when he interviewed several leaders as people who are successful, who bring accomplishment. They seem to have these six characteristics quite well.
RV: And we haven't listed the sixth.
PK: Sixth is motivation: what motivates you.
There is green motivation. It says "Look,. I'm intrinsically motivated. Whatever I do, whatever you say, is going to just be amusing. It will be good, but my internal motivation is not dependent on external factors."
Blue motivation is, "Let me enjoy this right now. I don't mind appreciation and acknowledgment. It doesn't do bad things. So go ahead, if you want to appreciate, go ahead. Just let me do what I need to do."
Red motivation is like saying "You know, this is what counts: Give me the money, give me appreciation." It's completely based on external motivation.
The six competencies are: motivation, will and fortitude, discrimination and intelligence, the doership or agency that I am, action orientation and the perspective that I have. The first three are the three parts of a fulcrum. Without that, the work does not get done. The anatomy of leadership depends upon the first three. The fourth and fifth, discrimination, and will and fortitude, are physiological part. If an anatomical part of leadership and work is taken care of by the first three, the other two are like a blood flow, and how things happen inside without being seen. Without intelligence and will, you can't take it to the next level. Motivation is like the psychology. That is what determines why people do what they do. So these six are extremely critical.
RV: Those are very interesting. You know, when I think about some of the developmental perspectives you have mentioned in addition to anatomy, physiology and psychology they also include either spirit or soul, or both, and I'm wondering where that is in your model.
PK: What I did find is that the competencies are used for practical putting the foot on the table, blue mood, is completely practical. It is not about spiritual. It's a very down-to-earth, grounded, material perspective. The red mood is a certain way of looking at beliefs about spirit. But Red is in business. The rules of business are different from those that are spiritual, so I will run my business by the business rules and then I will go pray, or give donations to take care of the bad stuff I had to do while doing business. Okay? (Laughter) That is the Red mood.
And the green mood has a need to integrate spirituality and material existence. The most appropriate way to do that is through balance. I need to do business with the business people with a certain spiritual perspective, with a certain balanced perspective.
The fourth level, which is beyond the three moods, is to have the choice to be able to operate from the spirit so the spirit can penetrate either the material, the business or the values perspectives. From this level we have the freedom to choose.
RV: As you think about this, particularly as you work with leaders, do you treat this as a map that says, "Now here's the framework, the lens through which you can look? And do you also see it in any way as prescriptive?
PK: I'm sure there is a certain judgment about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate, so there is a certain spiritual perspective about what is right and wrong. Definitely it's values based. It's not a value free model, so there is a certain perspective that the green is good, blue is where we start from. Is that what you are asking?
RV: Um hmm.
PK: Yes, there is that prescriptive coloring. I can divide people into categories once I do the assessment. I can identify who would be very, very good in getting things done. They are great for execution. And I can also identify people who are very good in business development and marketing. I can identify people who are very good as senior executives like the CEO or General Manager. I can also identify people who are good on Boards of Directors or advisors. There is a ce prescriptive aspect, like saying these are some things which would make better executives or leaders.
RV: Okay. Have you had opportunity to test that out yet, To make those kinds of assessments and then look at performance?
PK: I have used this methodology with about 300-400 people so far. I have used it with CEOs and with people who come to workshops in Boeing and in other companies. It seems to fit right on and it helps them to navigate. This is a very tangible, clear way that helps them to consider, "Do I want to make a choice? Do I want to make something from here, today?"
RV: Individuals are able to use this as a way of looking at themselves, gaining awareness and making some choices about their own learning?
PK: That's correct. That's very practical. We have a questionnaire that people are able to take very quickly and understand it, and they can make some sense of how they produce results. They see that if they need to produce different kind of results there are changes they can make.
RV: Do you see the results of the questionnaire as predictive in terms of performance?
PK: I want to be a little bit careful there for the simple reason that there are three things that seem to effect our actions. One is obviously a certain innate drive that we come with, the natural drives, the pulls we have. The second is attitudes. Third is the action that we take. So what I'm suggesting is that the innate genetic basis for classifying people and saying this is where they are, these are the types, and this is what they are fit for doesn't help you to recognize that you can change. If there is a genetic basis there is not much you can change, you can just be aware of it. What I am developing here is directly about neither action nor genetic. It is about choice. You can become very aware of the attitude with which you are working and what is it producing. Then the leader can ask, "Do I want to do this or not?" Then the question is will they execute based on the awareness that they have developed? Will they pay enough attention or not? This changes from one situation to another.
RV: Performance is unpredictable.
PK: That's correct. Obviously our attitudes determine many of the actions that we take, so if we can shape the attitudes there is a higher chance that this will also influence actions and, hence, outcomes.
RV: If people wanted to know how they could learn more about this, or access the assessment, or anything else like that, how would they go about that?
PK: They can send me e-mail: pkaipa@selfcorp.com.
RV: Is there anything that I didn't ask you about this that you think I should?
PK: It is important to remember, like any of this developmental stuff, it does not put people in a box. That is very critical. The moment you look at it and say, oh my God, I have such a greenness in me, or such a redness in me, and if I use this to predict success, or saying my attitude is green, that means I must be always acting green, that would be inappropriate. It is important to remember that each one of us has got all the three moods and we can shift those. That is why it is extremely important to remember this is developmental. This allows you to learn based on feedback. It is in your control to change these attitudes. These are very precise, simple and effective means by which you can make small but significant changes in your attitude and behavior. That's how I'm hoping that these will be used over time.
To read more about the model Prasad Kaipa has developed, go to www.selfcorp.com. Originally published in a shorter version in Integral Leadership Review, April 2002