A CykoMetrix Spotlight Production

Every week, the Spotlight shines on an amazing professional with a story to tell and lessons to teach. Welcome to the CykoMetrix Spotlight.

The following is an adapted transcript of the exchange between Sylvain Rochon, CMO at CykoMetrix as host, and Sapan Shrimal, Director of Monk@Work.

Sylvain: Welcome to the CykoMetrix Spotlight. My name is Sylvain Rochon. I’m the chief marketing officer at CykoMetrix, a SaaS-based platform that does psychometric tests, it is a platform for other people’s psychometric tests so you can serve your customers, deliver psychometry, train, and then rinse and repeat, and keep doing it. The system keeps track of all that data so you can go back and do data analysis and all kinds of really interesting things to really serve your customers and give them visibility over the ROI, how effectiveness and productivity increases… Hopefully, all sorts of values and beautiful metrics will also increase to improve them and do continuous development of all sorts. 

Today, I do have a guest in the spotlight. His name is Sapan Shrimal. He’s the director at Monk@Work. Monk@Work is a mindfulness consulting firm enabling organizations to accelerate leadership, performance, culture, and well-being in the workplace. Sapan comes with a rich experience in the field of leadership and cultural transformation, coupled with over 20 years of practice and study in mindfulness. His insightful perspectives are trusted by leading organizations across industries, including many Fortune 500 companies and large conglomerates. He has been a speaker at various industry and HR forums, including the Business World HR Summit, FICCI, NHRDN, IBPG-Abu Dhabi, Mindful Leadership Summit, and more. His perspectives have been captured in publications of prominence too, including Business Today and Hindu Business Line.

He has helped companies like L&T, GE, ONGC, Tata Group, Adani Power, DP World, Cognizant, SAIL, BNP Paribas, Amdocs, Khimji Group in Oman, Volvo Eicher, John Deere, Tech Mahindra, Cybage, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sterlite Power, Federal-Mogul, RPSG Group, NTPC, Capita, My FM and more in their efforts to bring a transformational shift in the work culture and leadership.

That is a mouthful. Sapan, there’s been a lot of activity on your end. You’ve been all over the world talking about mindfulness. Today, we’ll want to talk about something you told me recently, which is one of your programs called the Secret Code of Mindfulness. I thought that was a really great primer to get the discussion going because my first question is, how do you measure mindfulness? It seems to be so ephemeral a thing. How do you do that?

Sapan Shrimal: Thanks so much, Sylvain, for this kind introduction. I’m absolutely glad to be here.

We can define mindfulness in just three words: It’s sustained, effortless, awareness. This is how it feels in our minds when we say, “I’m mindful” – Sustained, effortless, awareness.

At the base of it, at the most foundational level, it is awareness. What is awareness? Awareness is simply the level of alertness that I have at any given moment or in general, how much aware and alert do I remain? I could be half asleep. That’s one of the lowest levels of awareness, or I could be participating in a competition where I am absolutely aware. Then I have a lot of things in between. I am wakeful. I’m awake, but possibly I’m just doing my brushing. We all know how much we are lost and absent-minded as we do any of these routine tasks. Our awareness level varies in different situations. What is our awareness level? It is coupled with the singularity of focus. How much is my alertness and singularity of focus on one thing defines my mindfulness level.

This is level number one. This is the first quality, first trait in mindfulness. But that’s not sufficient. Now, look at possibly a soldier who is sitting on a border or possibly on a Ukrainian border or any other border as we see today. They are aware, they are alert, but we can’t call them mindful. One of the reasons is that their alertness will go up and down. The real mindfulness is when our alertness sustains for a longer time. My mindfulness will go deeper when the awareness sustains. While I have enhanced my alertness level, but am I able to sustain it? We call it as attention. After awareness, the second factor that comes is attention. Not only do I have enhanced alertness. I’m absolutely focused and present to what’s happening right now in this moment. But I am also able to sustain it for an extended period. It could be one minute. It could be ten minutes or it could be an hour, but it should be an extended period.

Now, these two factors again are not sufficient because there is third thing also required. As we are talking about a soldier on the border, the soldier sitting there is possibly struggling inside while he or she is aware. They are attentive. But still, they are afraid. This should not happen or I wish I could go somewhere else. There could be a lot of turbulence and agitations which could be happening inside their minds.

When we are talking about mindfulness, it is a state of sustained effortless awareness. Effortlessness, I am attentive and there is no effort. Where does our efforts generally go into? Our efforts go into saying, “Oh, I don’t like this,” or “Oh, I really want this.” This is good. This is bad.

I’m doing my mindfulness practice and some noise comes. I say, “Why this is happening? This should not happen.” Some thoughts come and I say, “This should not happen.” This type of non-acceptance, being judgmental, being non-equanimous lowers our mindfulness.

But if we can maintain our attentiveness, if we can maintain our awareness while remaining equanimous, while remaining just a witness to what’s happening without judging or being opinionated and just accepting whatever is happening, simply witnessing what is happening as we reach to that stage, this is complete mindfulness.

Again, like awareness level, acceptance is not an absolute level that I’m accepting or not accepting. There’s a whole range. Awareness, there are different level. Attention, the second part, has different levels. Acceptance, different levels. This is called the AAA model of mindfulness. We are talking about mindfulness not as an ambiguous and non-understandable subject, rather we are talking about it as a concrete trait which has very specific sub-elements: awareness, attention, and acceptance.
 
Now, the moment we break mindfulness into these three parts, it becomes so easy to measure them. It becomes easy to develop them, very important. Because whenever people think about being more mindful, I’m mindful or not, why I want to become more mindful, the only tool, the only path, the only way they have got is possibly to switch on an audio, close their eyes and do something. What happens is they think they are somewhere in mindfulness. They think they are doing something and they think that they are reaching somewhere. All the time it is completely hazy.

But once the person realizes there is something called awareness. There is something called attention. There is something called acceptance. I know when I am paying my attention to something, what is my level of alertness. I can actually find that out by my own experience my level of alertness. I can find out generally by my own experience how much attentive I remain for how long extended period. I also know how much I am in acceptance and how effortless I am, or I have different levels of agitation, clinging, attachment to my own general life experiences or mindfulness experiences.

This is how mindfulness can be measured. This is called the AAA model and with this AAA model, mindfulness can be measured. To take things forward, we also have brought a mindfulness measurement tool, which is called the Mindfulness Index, which actually measures each of these three factors in a very scientifically, psychometrically principles validated way. The whole measurement can happen. Mindfulness can be measured and there is a very structured way in which it can be done.

No doubt that this is something very new. Until this point of time, there have been efforts in measuring mindfulness in some way or another. But this is possibly one of the first attempts in which we are creating an integrated model, the AAA model of mindfulness. According to which, the whole measurement is happening.

 

Sylvain: That’s great. I mean, that’s an amazing explanation. I have lots of other questions to ask off of that. Let’s start with just a few. I just want to make a comment. Like you said, this is really exciting because mindfulness is considered something fuzzy that you can’t really measure. But if you can’t measure it, how do you know if you’re improving? Because you have an impression.

I used to be a chemistry teacher, right? I’m teaching thermodynamics. As an example, I would put my students’ hands in hot water and then in tepid water, like in room temperature water. They would say, “Well, this water is really cold,” even though it was room temperature, right? Then the same with the cold water and you put that in the same tepid water, and they say, “Well, now it’s really hot.” Well, the room temperature water never changes temperature. But your experiences before affects your impression.

How do you improve so that you are able to measure something as important, I think, as a traditionally fuzzy concept as mindfulness becomes really important because then you can work on it and actually improve and measure improvements. Now my question is, mindfulness, the way you define it, it sounds very similar. I understand your Goleman references because I have studied Goleman as well. It sounds very similar to the Big 5 parameter called “conscientiousness,” right? I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Big 5 and the intricacies of it. 

Sapan: Yes.

Sylvain: Conscientiousness is one of them. The “C” in CANOE. How does it differ or is it similar to that specific well-researched parameter?

Sapan: Very interesting. I think this question keeps coming. The shortest answer that we give is mindfulness is almost equivalent to consciousness, while what we’re talking about in Big 5 is conscientiousness. The difference between conscientiousness and consciousness could be we can put it there.

When we talk about conscientiousness, it also includes a lot of parts in terms of how law-abiding, rule-abiding am I. It also comes from a lot of inner programming that I have already done on either side. I do it, I follow the law or I don’t follow the law. I follow the rules, don’t follow the rules. How sincere am I towards my commitments or am I not again depends on a lot of life experiences.

I would rather say that conscientiousness actually sits at the foundation of mindfulness. Rather I can say this for anything. For example, if you are talking about emotional intelligence, if you’re talking about creativity, leadership, innovation, having low unconscious bias, any of the capabilities that we are talking about possibly can be enriched if there is a basis for mindfulness. There is a distinction in the layers. The foundation is mindfulness. 

The first layer is mindfulness because in this layer, we are not talking about any pre-programmed conceptions inside our mind. No thought in terms of, okay, “This is how it should be”, and “This is how it should not be.” It’s already gone into the concepts behind it. It’s pure the way I use my awareness. The way I use my attention. What I’m doing is, I’m aware, I’m maintaining my awareness, and I’m being an equanimous. Now with that base, now I can possibly be more conscientious. I have more conscientiousness, possibly. But at the same time, I might be using this conscientiousness in a more judicious manner. For example, if I am mindful, I might not be rigid. I might have a little flexibility in case there is an emergency. There is somewhere I need to break rules for greater good. I might want to do it. I am not programmed to say “No, you are not. You have to be rigid like that.” Like this, I think many of the other qualities can get more enriched, more accelerated, and will have larger human flexibility if the base is mindfulness.

Sylvain: You bet, that’s a great answer. I did not know the answer but I knew there was some kind of connection because of the definitions, right? I know the definition of conscientiousness because we use the Big 5 in our assessment. I think that’s a really important comment that they are similar but not the same. Like the other in a way, but that means you may have very different measurements for it.

But according to our general research, conscientiousness, the one that we know well, you know mindfulness a lot better, is actually rated very high as a parameter for business or life success, right below cognition, which is even more fundamental. The ability to understand your environment at an intellectual level, it’s right under there.

I suspect that mindfulness being a piece of that more general conscientiousness, it must be really high in importance as well, similarly to conscientiousness. To be an effective person in a team or in life in general. Can you speak a bit more about that and its importance in the workplace? Because I know you specialized with workplaces and HR.

Sapan: Mindfulness largely affects… we can actually categorize the benefits of mindfulness into three parts because the benefits are so wide and large. One is on the health and wellness.

One of the earliest applications of mindfulness happen in the form of MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction. One of the most popular techniques given was by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who studied mindfulness possibly on a very initial stage around 1979 in MIT’s Medical College, where he did a very thorough study on how mindfulness helps in stress, as compared to many other traditional methods of reducing stress. Mindfulness is known for reducing stress, enhancing our positive emotions, overall wellness. It’s very well documented, very well adopted in the last few years and especially during the COVID times. We got so many people coming back and saying, “We really need mindfulness because stress has gone so much up.” It’s very well-known in terms of stress.

What is not known are the other two buckets other than the wellness part. The other two buckets that I would really want to talk about now. One is performance and not just performance, peak performance. The second part is leadership, interactions, relationships. On these two areas, not much work has happened explicitly. When people practice mindfulness, they do get a lot of benefits in these two areas also.

I would want to just touch upon specifically on peak performance. It’s understood that if I do mindfulness, I’ll feel calm, refreshed. Many people misinterpret it as becoming little complacent and just being laid-back.

Sylvain: Lethargic?

Sapan: Lethargic, yeah. Because you are just feeling nice and calm, go into Nirvana.” This is a very misunderstood concept because what mindfulness does is not just take a person into some refreshed thinking. How does mindfulness work, it’s important to look at it in the right perspective.

When we talk about the two parts of the brain which are most talked about, I mean, there are many parts, but two parts. One is the amygdala, which is the seat of emotions. The panicky watchman that we have and it’s always on the lookout for, “Oh my God, is there a problem?” This amygdala hyperactivity always keeps us on our toes whether we realize it or not. I mean, most of the time, our shoulders are straight up, our eyes are strained even in general. But when we are a little bit stressed, it becomes even more. It is always giving us that strained posture and that strained mindset all the time.

What mindfulness does is as we become mindful, which is we become aware, we are attentive and we become more equanimous, we become more accepting of whatever is being offered. In those moments, as we do this exercise, the turbulence, the agitation, the commotion inside the brain actually get settled down. This is the simple function of mindfulness if we have to just understand what mindfulness does.

I think this is what is being used a lot, the mental fog or the mind clutter. There is so much at any given point of time, even during sleep. We are not free of this mental fog. We get 50, 60, 70 thousand thoughts during the day. It’s very foggy, very hazy inside there. What mindfulness does is and it’s a very basic and simple principle, that when I focus on one thing, when I focus in a very specific way, not like in a very concentration manner or in a strained manner, but rather in a very effortless manner, attention, awareness, acceptance. As I build that, what happens is the fog, the clutter inside my mind begins to settle and longer. I’m able to extend this deep focus the deeper I go. The more settled this whole clutter happens.

Now, then multiple type of impact comes. The first impact is I feel light. I feel calm because there was so much of commotion happening inside my mind. Suddenly it had got settled now. People use drugs, alcohol, even coffee. I mean, so anything that we use is largely to settle this down. It has got many other side effects as well, while it gives that immediate boost or refreshment. But here is something that is a natural exercise to settle this whole thing. This is where mental wellness, where the calmness, where the refreshment, more energy, less stress comes. These are all documented that our cortisol level comes down, our oxytocin and serotonin level go up. These are all documented findings.

Now, another outcome that comes when this whole clutter settles down is we have much larger clarity. When we talk about clarity of mind, we have fog or there are a lot of clouds and they’re going in a flight. Nothing is visible. But the moment the clouds settle down we are up in the sky, this blue sky is clear. This is an exact analogy that actually happens inside our minds. When the clutter settles down, we have much greater clarity. During these times, we are able to tap into the deeper zones of our mind. This is very important. Again, this is not something new. The book by Cal Newport, Deep Work, is based on this principle. He talks about how we can exponentially increase our productivity and creativity by following the principles of undistracted working. We’re focusing on one thing and not getting distracted and continues that we now getting into those deeper zones.

Much before Deep Work, the book Flow. We all know about the book by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote this great book. How do we get into the state of flow, which is not only an enabler for us to do sometimes beyond human things. He talks about the musicians. He talks about the adventures of sports players who get into a flow state and are able to perform unimaginable feats. But it also gives an immense level of happiness. One thing which is a source of success and happiness. When we do this type of deep tasking, when we are able to focus on one thing and for an extended period, we actually stretch our deeper zone muscles. That’s where the seat of productivity, efficiency, insights, wisdom, ideas, creativity, that’s where it happens.

This is not again something we have not experienced. Rather, we all have experienced this. When? When you or any one of us, when we have to think of a proper solution, when we have to actually create a larger presentation, think of an idea, we generally just don’t sit down and start doing it. We say, “I need to find an hour which is free of any disturbances.” We sometimes sit early in the morning, late in the evening, late at night sometimes. Or on a weekend or in the morning. We say, “I need to really focus.” Now, what does that mean, I need to focus? It simply means that I need time for my mind to settle down so I can actually reach that zone where I’m able to perform rightly where the ideas will come.

We should ask this question, why does it not happen that I sit and get the idea? Why doesn’t it happen? The simple reason is our minds are almost always in commotion in education. There is a lot of clutter happening and we need to set or possibly stand or run or do anything. But more important is we are focused on one thing.

One of the go-to activities that I have is a brisk walk. Whenever I need a creative idea, I would go for a brisk walk. Now, what brisk walk does is I’m completely focused on my walk. On the way, my feet touched the ground and the whole body is moving in that walk. That’s the only thing. Then a lot of thoughts, emotions which are possibly going on, they come up and they go. Then gradually the settlement happens. It takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes when the whole thing settles down. Then the only thing we need to do is just need to throw the question. This is the question that I need an answer to. We continue the brisk walk. As we continue the brisk walk, the ideas tend to just pop up and that happens.

I mean, the eureka moments that come in the bathtub happens because we are not thinking about the problem at that point of time. Our minds are so subtle. But when we put too much strain, we fill our minds with too many thoughts, analysis, and too many emotions, it becomes very difficult for the mind to actually come out with the right ideas over my needs to get settled down. This is not something we are talking new or a rocket science. This is something we all experienced. We have all actually gone through this scheme of things. Whenever it is needed, we have actually settled down our minds and then we started thinking and then you started getting ideas. 

Unfortunately, our moments, our hours, our minutes of getting this deep work is continuously reduced. One, because of external factors. Second, also because of the way we are training our minds and we are training our minds dangerously. I was reading a study and it said we get distracted every 40 seconds when we are sitting in front of the screen. 40 seconds in front of the screen, almost the whole day we are in front of the screen. Different sizes of screen, but we are in front of the screen. 40 seconds, here we are talking about getting into those deeper zones gradually.

Our mind needs to be trained. Our external ecosystem should support us so we are able to go deeper. Then actuality what happens? 40 seconds we are distracted. We are working at a very superficial level. The level at least we are working right now is absolutely suboptimal. Why is nobody bothered about it? Because everybody is like that. But this is a very unfortunate situation that everybody is like that, so everybody thinks that’s normal. But that’s not normal for me. That’s not normal for you. That is not normal for an individual because we are missing out some of the biggest potentials of our life.

It is not just about work. It’s about how I read, how I learn, how I enjoy. We are missing out on all these things. I have seen Salman in my own personal experience. When I read a book in deep tasking manner, really mindful manner, every line I read and the line will go inside. Obviously, we have trillions of neurons which are already there. A lot of things already there. The new information goes inside, it makes new connections, and it gives insights. When we are reading the book for the purpose of fulfilling our new resolution and we have to just finish the book somehow or we are distracted by too many things and then we read the book also, the book does not give us even 5% of the value it could give. The value of the book is not just what is written there. The value of the book is when I read something and I reconnect with some of my earlier understanding, and then there is a communion that happens and there are new insights that come up. 

This is just about the book, but for anything and everything that we do in life, it applies. This is where mindfulness comes into the picture. Mindfulness actually brings that ability, that strengthening of muscles to bring that stability inside, “Yes, I can stay here for a longer period.” Even if my mind says, “Let me just take a coffee break. Let me just check my WhatsApp. Let me just check my email.” Now say, “No wait, I need to finish this.” I need to be here. It’s not urgent. When I do mindfulness, what happens is my ability, my muscles, to have greater awareness and greater attention increases. This is how it enhances peak performance. 

Sylvain: To borrow your phrase from one of your programs or at least part of it, finding a time when you don’t have distraction. Like you said, in your case, maybe the brisk walks or it could be, I don’t know, sitting in the bathtub or whatever it is. Is that the secret to actually eliminating some of those distractions or potential distractions? Is it finding times where you can be in those situations where you can remove the clutter? What is the secret. if not that?

Sapan: If I were to say, what is the secret of peak performance? The secret of peak performance is exactly what you mentioned, Sylvain: finding the way and ecosystem in which we can work in an undistracted manner. The secret of peak performance is when you are able to bring our attention and sustain it there for a longer period. That’s the secret of peak performance. If you read the book Flow, you would realize that every single person was doing exactly the same thing. They were actually bringing their attention and equanimity and effortlessness into the moment. That’s when the magic happens.

When we talk about how to do that, one of the ways, and I’m not saying mindfulness is the exclusive way of reaching peak performance, not at all. But mindfulness can be one of the secrets or one of the very powerful tools for us to reach to people’s problems. Because what happens is when we practice mindfulness, while we may be, we may practice mindfulness in two ways.

One, we call them mindfulness-based practices. You close your eyes, you follow some instructions, and you are actually training your attention in a particular way. We also call mindfulness-based active practices. Mindfulness-based active practices simply means we are actively doing something. Whether we are sipping a cup of coffee or we are having a conversation, or we are making a presentation, bringing our mindfulness, bringing our awareness and attention to those things are the secrets of peak performance.

What we are doing is we are building and strengthening the muscles. It’s like, if I am strengthening my muscles in a gym for 10 minutes, half an hour every day, it gives me the strength during the day also. I can lift higher weights during the day also. The same thing happens with mindfulness. Even if I have been practicing mindfulness for some time, it gives me strength for a larger period, not to say that by just doing something, but by just doing it one or two times somebody will get a superpower. It’s almost like a physical health or physical fitness. We need to build it over a period and more rigorously we build it, the greater benefits that we get it.

When we are talking about the secret of mindfulness. Now we are talking about the secret code of mindfulness. The secret code of mindfulness lies in the AAA model, which is awareness, attention, and acceptance.

What has been happening, Sylvain, is again, as we spoke earlier, that mindfulness is a bit fuzzy. Even in apps, the only matrix that you see is how many hours or minutes of practice I have done, how many uninterrupted days of practice I have been doing. That’s the only matrix I get. I don’t get to know how am I progressing on my mindfulness. This is one of the reasons. I mean, and you will appreciate this quantitative part, the psychometric part even much more that because this measurement is not happening. That’s one of the biggest reasons that mindfulness has remained this fuzzy topic.

Let’s contrast it with emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is much more acceptable. Surely it came as a scientific concept much earlier than mindfulness. But still, not only there was research, but there are psychometric tools, which can measure emotional intelligence. When they measure it, they just don’t say, “Okay, here is your emotional intelligence score.” They say, emotional intelligence divided into four parts. How do I identify your emotions? How do you identify others’ emotions? How do you manage your emotions? How do you address others’ emotions? Very specifically categorized building blocks of emotional intelligence. Those are measured, easy to measure, easy to develop. This is the same thing we have done with mindfulness. We have compartmentalized it into three building blocks of awareness, attention, and acceptance.

Measure each of these three things, find out where our strength lies, where if possible the area of improvement lies, and start working very specifically on that so that our overall mindfulness level goes up. The secret code of mindfulness is don’t follow it in a blind manner and just for short-term immediate benefit, but rather to follow it as a superpower, as a trait for long-term development by following the absolute scientific principles behind it.

Sylvain: I like that. Because without measurements, like we said before, without measurements, you don’t know what’s happening. I’m excited about this prospect some people may use different words, right? Or just subsets like measuring awareness. Just that part. I’ve seen this before, for example. But like I said, it has such a strong impact in our productivity. In our personal lives, it should be measured and it should be taken more seriously than just this fuzzy concept. Practice meditation and you’ll be better. I’m excited about your assessments because you specifically and scientifically have those measurements or at least an assessment that provides the measurements to people. I think that’s really great. Have you deployed these assessments specifically? Because I know it’s relatively new, have you deployed these assessments to a lot of clients yet?

Sapan: We just launched it just last month.

Sylvain: Yeah, I thought so.

Sapan: It’s very new at this point of time. But it’s already been through a norm population of almost 400. It’s applied to a statistically significant population. We know it and it works. We validated the instrument with two international tools on mindfulness. We got a very strong validation from those two tools as well. We know it’s validated and it’s working. We are now excited to go forward and help professionals, leaders, and organizations in now discovering how mindful are we. We really want to change so when the narrative, has been “am I mindful or not?” We want to change the narrative to how mindful I am.

Sylvain: That’s different, isn’t it? Because it’s something that changes.  It’s not a static parameter. You can improve on it. Changing the language around it makes it something that can be modulated, improved, and changed. This is exciting because it’s something reasonably new. Actually, it’s the measurement part, not the concept itself. As a psychometric platform, we are excited to take a look at it, observe, and have a conversation with you guys, and perhaps even work together in deploying this. Everybody can enjoy assessing at first their own mindfulness and seeing where improvements can be made to be made mindful and therefore more successful and reach peak performance, as you described. That’s amazing.

Sapan: Sylvain, it’s been great. Thanks, Sylvain. I really look forward to it.

Sylvain: Absolutely. Thank you for taking part in this interview and for being under the spotlight. This has been Sapan Shrimal at Monk@Work. You can check out their company and some of the information on there from the links that we provide in the blog or in the video. Enjoy, follow the developments. There’s more to come from Sapan.

About Sapan Shrimal – www.mindfulnessindex.com   

Sapan Shrimal is the Director at Monk@Work, a Mindfulness consulting firm enabling organizations to accelerate leadership, performance, culture and well-being at workplace.  Sapan is credited with introducing Triple Trait Model of Mindfulness©, which establishes the three core building blocks of mindfulness. He is also the creator of MEx (Mindfulness Index) – globally the first ever psychometric assessment to discover ‘How Mindful are we’ with a comprehensive profiling report for individuals and organizations.

Sapan comes with a rich experience in the field of leadership and cultural transformation, coupled with over 20 years of practice and study in mindfulness. His background in corporate strategy enables him to bring sharp focus on organizational priorities and clear business impact. Sapan’s industry experience, largely in renewable energy industry, includes a brief stint in United States of America. Having closely worked with people across multiple cultures and continents, he brings unique insights into workplace behaviour.

His insightful perspectives are trusted by leading organizations across industries, including many Fortune-500 companies and large conglomerates. He has been a speaker at various industry and HR forums (including Business World HR Summit, FICCI, NHRDN, IBPG Abu Dhabi, Mindful Leadership Summit, etc.) and his perspectives have been captured in publications of prominence (including Business Today and Hindu Business Line). He has helped companies like L&T, GE, ONGC, Tata Group, Adani Power, DP (Dubai Port) World, Cognizant, SAIL, BNP Paribas, Amdocs, Khimji Group (Oman), Volvo-Eicher, John Deere, Tech Mahindra, Cybage, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sterlite Power, Federal Mogul, RPSG Group, NTPC, Capita, MyFM, etc. in their endeavour to bring a transformational shift in the work culture and leadership.

He is a certified master life coach and a certified master practitioner in NLP. He is also certified in Psychometric Testing from Psytech, UK (under EFPA). Sapan is also a Vipassana meditation practitioner and takes active interest in latest scientific and research developments in Mindfulness.

Sapan is an MBA from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune.

About CykoMetrix – www.CykoMetrix.com

CykoMetrix is a leading edge combinatorial psychometric and human data analytics company that brings the employee assessment industry to the cloud, with instant assessments, in-depth analysis, trait measurements, and team-based reporting features that simplify informed decision-making around recruiting, training, and managing today’s modern workplace.