The Universe of Personal Alignment
Personal Alignment is a function of Identity and Life Role

Personal Alignment is the individual’s ability to create a context for the self to unfold and assume this responsibility. “Taking charge of one’s destiny” is such a process where the individual becomes aware as to the need to be able to reflect on the self. The individual is able to experience contexts in refreshing ways and the ability to offer new perspectives.

The normal methods of training and competence building in organizations are with a focus on creating better performance. They do not focus on creating spaces for self-exploration and inner discovery. Therefore, when the props of an “entrained” mind are taken away, the human mind tends to shrink back and remain blind to the new, rather than perceive and embrace the new. The mind as well as the heart retreat into old patterns of thought and feeling. Through the understanding of “Personal Alignment” the individual becomes integrated in thought, feeling and action, thus becoming an extraordinarily powerful agent of change and growth.

Human energy is the only living energy in organizations. Questioning the prevalent forms of thought and action, exploring turbulent environments armed with potent enquiry and nurturing creative sparks of imagination and thought are ways in which this energy expresses itself. In such expression, the individual and the group he/she is part of experience joy and growth. When such enquiry and expression are stopped, the energy remains captive and turns toxic and corrosive.

Interventions on Personal Alignment are based on the philosophy that our expressions are reflections of our inner energies. The ability to play a large number of roles and to have the intelligence to make appropriate choices in playing them is the foundation of “Life Skills”. The understanding of life skills and emotional intelligence is critical to the ability of the individual to recall and experience subtle inner changes that are lasting. FLAME TAO Knoware deploys technologies such as theater, labs, and yoga to bring about personal alignment, working with identity and life role shaping propensities for the individual.

The Universe of Personal Alignment allows the integration of personal growth, coaching, understanding leadership with Role Alignment.

Personal Growth Labs
The Personal Growth Labs are focused on enabling the person to expanding his / her role repertoire, and exploring the processes of choice making and role shaping. Learning to express and building a capacity for self-reflexivity become key processes for exploration and person grow. The Personal Growth Labs allow the person to co-create a space that examines identity and life roles. It allows the individual to work with toxicity and stress within and internalize the processes of self replenishment.

Personal Alignment & Yoga
The health of a person and his / her ability to respond to the challenges of his /her job without feeling stressed is a basic requirement. While this might seem obvious, very rarely do we see organizations invest enough to ensure an individual’s physical and psychological health. The source of energy in an organization is the individual. The person’s health and vibrancy are the foundation on which all actions rest. Yoga and Pranayama increase the awareness of the body. The individual experiences a simultaneous challenge to his/her cognitive and expressive processes. A holistic learning takes place.

The Personal Alignment Intervention is structured around 3 levels:

1. Unfolding
What is the nature of reality as we experience it today? To be able to answer this question requires clarity of perception. All other critical questions in life such as what is right action, right livelihood and right behaviour are founded upon our perception and interpretations of reality. This level asks fundamental questions like “Who am I?”  What is my growth and potential? It also addresses sources of stress and how we gear ourselves to overcome them.
 
2. Leading the Self.
The key reflections from the basic level workshop leads the individual into this next level where he looks at his intents and goals and how it is pursued and the kind of interpersonal and intrapersonal learning disciplines that emerge.

3. Leading Others.
This module will help the individuals become the anchors of change in the organization. Through a series of interventions that use principles from process work and yoga, the individual discovers and becomes totally tuned to his/her inner and outer realities.

Participants that have completed all three levels will be able to co-anchor future Level I and II programs within their organization.

Exploring Growth through Learning Theater
Learning Theatre offers a space where the following requirements, tendencies of individuals in an organization maybe looked at in a refreshing way:

1. While acquisition of skills is necessary to discharge ones responsibilities, and the relationship between the skills available and performance is apparent, what is not apparent is the person’s attitude and orientation to work.
2. An individual entering an organization is fluent with a small range of roles. Hence when challenges at work call for a new set of responses and greater resilience, the person feels stressed.
3. Every individual in an organization must invest a great deal in order to align themselves to the larger goals and the organization; he must listen to the underlying rhythms of the organization and play his part in a spontaneous harmony. Teams and organizations that achieve a deep rhythm and order in its functioning, develop a great power and focus. They are responsive to change.

Learning a whole range of expressions and experimenting with roles that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable, releases a person from his/her limited repertoire of roles and facilitates a wholesome participation in life as it unfolds.
 
The learning context one experiences in schools and colleges is very limited and uninspiring. The focus, on cognitive learning and classroom instruction, has restricted the context in which a person learns “Life Skills”. Using theatre reverses this tendency and creates a vibrant and stimulating context for awakening emotional intelligence.

Illustrative Clients: The Muruguppa Group, Rane Group, TATA Administrative Services …

Exploring Growth through Learning Adventure
This intervention is based on the philosophy that one’s outer actions and behaviors are a reflection of inner patterns of choice making. The work contexts we experience in organizations today throw up great challenges. However, these challenges are communicated in "soft packaging" or systemic processes. It is very easy for the person to loose sight of the real "call to adventure" thrown up in this context and treat work as routine or just "cope" with work pressures.

Putting a person in a more primitive environment where challenges are more direct and elemental wakes up something within the person. Fears of unknown, excitement in the face of adventure, inadequacies and capabilities self centredness and group commitment, dependency and initiative, endurance and lack of will, ability to stretch and tendency to give up and many other characteristics of the person are tested in the stark context of direct physical challenge. The encounter of nature in its simplicity and austere beauty often awakens a person from deep within himself. That part of the self that holds dreams and poetry gets evoked.

To make the learning adventure a "simulation" of organizational adventure, the intervention is designed with a strong behavioral component. By weaving together outer challenges and inner explorations, the intervention builds a tapestry of experience that the person can reflect upon. This tapestry will mirror the person's inner processes and provide him with a personal agenda to work upon for enhancing his ability to face challenges.

The intervention will provide the individual with an opportunity to

1. Discover new levels of stretch and a new will to endure, plus awaken dreams and energize one’s vision of the future.
2. The sheer joy of achievement and an understanding of the inner thresholds one must cross in order to encounter adventure
3. Team work and inter dependence as the individual and group respond to inadequacies and limitations.

Illustrative Clients: Triveni Tissues, Muruguppa Group, TATA Administrative Services …

Competency Assessment & Development Centers
FLAME TAO Knoware team has worked with many organizations on development centers on the following lines:

1. Designing of Assessment Centers & Competencies.
2. Training and transferring “Development Competency” and creating internal assessors for client organizations.
3. Assessment of leaders and managers, across client organizations 

FLAME TAO Knoware deploys ‘Tensegrity Mandala’ (a FLAME TAO Framework) that provides a clear and consistent Organizational Model and integrates:

• Work levels
  The Tensegrity Mandala underlines the work of Elliot Jaques (a pioneer in defining different work levels in terms of time, uncertainty & risk, and complexity), and gives shape to work-level competencies at Level 4 and above.


• Task-role competencies
  The Tensegrity Mandala defines task role competencies. For each job position, we map the set of task role behaviors, and also map skills & knowledge required to sustain the competency.


• Leadership behaviors
  The model enables the participant to integrate “self” & “role” within the organization and subsequently allows the participant in defining a personal development roadmap.

The FLAME TAO consulting team has had a substantive exposure to thought leaders, senior managers, researchers, academic institutions, and consulting professionals. All team members are behavioral scientists who have an understanding of individual and group behavior. The team can integrate western frameworks and perspectives within an understanding of Indian culture and primary / secondary socialization, allowing the participant a better self-reflexivity during the intervention.  

Illustrative Clients: Sun Microsystems (India), Sun Microsystems (APAC), TCS Limited

Competency Assessment & Development Centers
Within the ambit of One on One Coaching, FLAME TAO Knoware offers consulting solutions on Mentoring and Coaching. We visualize our engagement as co-designers and co-implementers that can integrate and customize the Organization’s Growth Strategy and Culture with the proposed Intervention.

We move beyond the standardized “templates” of delivery into dialoguing, creating, deploying, and aligning Coaching initiatives that are attuned to Business Strategy, Culture Building, and Values.

The FLAME TAO Team is equipped to deploy instruments including CPI (California Psychological Inventory), TAT (Thematic Apperception Tests), MBTI, MRM (Managerial Role Matrix), OIM (Organizational Identity Matrix), EUM (Existential Universe Mapper), Firo B etc.

Some of the Coaching frameworks that we use include and build upon the works of Clare Graves, Ken Wilber, Joseph Campbell, and Yogasutras.

Illustrative Clientele: TCS Limited, The Muruguppa Group, 

Leadership Development
Flame TAO Knoware has done pioneering work within the realm of leadership deploying frameworks and gestalts, using mythologies, Yoga, Indian thought, Learning Adventure, and Theater. Leadership development is integral to many of our interventions on Change and Transformation, and becomes a crucial intervention at multiple levels within the organization.

Flame TAO has designed Leadership Role taking assessment centers that enables the individual to explore and examine the nature of role taking and choice making within the organizational context.

Coaching is structured around the leader’s identity and the emerging external context.