The Couch Talk The Empowerment Portal

Sridhar is a HR manager who works in hospitality. Hear about how he has led his organisation through the shift during the pandemic, where he faced numerous challenges starting from business shut down to colleagues on furlough. Find out how the organisation – despite all of these hurdles – not only retain their staff but also create an engaged community and make The Arts Club an employer of choice.

Sridhar did his Dual degrees in India 20 years ago and since then worked in Asia and the UK in luxury hospitality settings. As an ardent advocate for continuous learning, Sridhar successfully completed an MBA in Strategic Human Resources Management at the University of Surrey. He is also a Chartered Fellow CIPD. Since joining The Arts Club in 2014, Sridhar has been instrumental in creating a successful L&D function with multiple talent development programs, an e-learning system, and partnerships with some of the best educational institutes in the world. Sridhar oversees all aspects of Human Resources for The Arts Club, in addition to offering his support with the Club’s first international expansion to Dubai.



This is how you can contact Sridhar: Sridhar@theartsclub.co.uk + https://www.theartsclub.co.uk/



Want to connect with The Empowerment Portal?

We partner with HR and help small and medium-size organisations lead the way to sustainable recovery & growth. The Empowerment Portal provides a self-serve platform of screened learning & development content. It also provides lunch & learns and access to coaches and consultants to support HR and its employees. Book a Demo call with us CLICK HERE.



Website: www.theempowermentportal.com



Subscribe and review our Couch Talk Podcast

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Couch Talk. If this podcast has added value and helped you in your organisational journey, please head over to Spotify, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more organisations and HR and people leaders just like you.

Jamie Green is a Berkshire resident, volunteer, and community leader. He holds a number of completely voluntary roles, most notably the Chair of Slough Council for Voluntary Service.

Three weeks before COVID lockdown Jamie jumped into action, selflessly volunteering day and night to work with the staff and community groups at Slough Council for Voluntary Service, civil servants at Slough Borough Council, and business leaders from across the town – to co-found what would become #OneSlough. There was no task too big or too small for Jamie as he humbly, quietly and without complaint or question gave over every day of the week, helping others plan for and then cope with the impact of COVID.

He acted as the neutral face of #OneSlough with no personal or political agenda he was able to broker relationships between groups who had never previously worked together, he inspired those who had never volunteered to give freely of their time, he lobbied businesses to contribute to the cause with staff, resources, and cash.

Each day he would make collections, connect people, motivate staff and volunteers, join the dots and ensure no one was left out, representing the most marginalised whilst also developing strategies with senior leaders across the borough and beyond to keep resources moving and reduce the spread of the virus.

Jamie is continuing in this role and has established other projects under the #OneSlough umbrella including the Furniture Project, providing donated furniture to those in need. There has been much demand for this service as families struggle with redundancies and hardship.

Jamie prioritised the wellbeing of Slough and the need to work together. He embodies the ethos of what became known as #OneSlough – no branding, no organisation, working together for the shared good.



Want to connect with The Empowerment Portal?

We partner with HR and help small and medium-size organisations lead the way to sustainable recovery & growth. The Empowerment Portal provides a self-serve platform of screened learning & development content. It also provides lunch & learns and access to coaches and consultants to support HR and its employees. Book a Demo call with us CLICK HERE.



Website: www.theempowermentportal.com



Subscribe and review our Couch Talk PodcastThanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Couch Talk. If this podcast has added value and helped you in your organisational journey, please head over to Spotify, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more organisations and HR and people leaders just like you.

Harry began his professional speaking career at the tender age of 16 and now after 30 years of experience and serving over a million people across the world, is recognised as one of the world’s most Inspirational and Transformational Speakers and Humanitarian President & CEO of Elite Transformations Global, a UK based international consulting firm working with clients on 6 continents to create Heart Centred Transformational Leadership Cultures.



Show Notes



Harry has had a rough upbringing in East London. But despite the challenges at home, he was resilient and thought that others would be worse off because his classmates would come to school with sad faces.

At 16 he felt he wanted to make a difference and work with vulnerable communities. He started to make a name and an impact on so many other lives.

Harry now works with people at the top of their “game”, such as top leaders and athletes who have hit a glass ceiling. He believes that often it’s not about doing more or up a level in a skillset but finding one’s authentic voice and tune into the high lever energy in order to achieve the next level “you”.

In this episode, Harry also shares his “take” on the pandemic and the fact that we as humans took so many things for granted and that instead of moving back into a normal – we should be moving forwards and seize a new way of living.

Today he runs a range of Masterminds and he’s found on large stages shared with celebrities such as Richard Branson and Tony Robbins. 



This is how you can contact Harry: Glad2help@harrysingha.com www.harrysingha.com



Want to connect with The Empowerment Portal?

We partner with HR and help small and medium-size organisations lead the way to sustainable recovery & growth. The Empowerment Portal provides a self-serve platform of screened learning & development content. It also provides lunch & learns and access to coaches and consultants to support HR and its employees. Book a Demo call with us CLICK HERE.



Website: www.theempowermentportal.com



Subscribe and review our Couch Talk Podcast

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Couch Talk. If this podcast has added value and helped you in your organisational journey, please head over to Spotify, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more organisations and HR and people leaders just like you.

Bozidar is an engineer by trade, specializing in Information Security. He has worked for large enterprises - Telco, Banking, and Energy before shifting to the startup world and SaaS-based services.

In the past two years, he has started a mentoring initiative called BeyondMachines. It's focused on young people who need guidance in speeding up their careers via guidance and interaction with more senior people in a real-life situation (sales pitch, presentation, coordination, etc). So far the mentoring effort is in its third iteration, it got somewhat sidelined in the pandemic.



Show Notes



These days the attention span of a goldfish is somehow standard. And that's not just for people, that's also for organizations, everybody wants something immediately. So in that context, we should be able to help young people accelerate or short circuit, the skills, the communication skills, and the interaction skills that they're expected to have in a professional setting.

In the fall of 2019, I started an initiative program of mentoring young engineers, which was aimed to help develop soft skills with young engineers who are still in school or just coming out of school. The goal of that program was to develop just as engineers can easily prepare, they easily get the skills, the technical skills that they need to thrive and develop in their profession, from courses from programs for from online systems and learning to somehow accelerate the part of their experience and their expertise that can't be learned from such courses. And that is communication and soft skills.

And then the pandemic hit and, from an interaction perspective, things were difficult, because of all these little meetings that we never even consider all these hellos in the hallway, all these little chats by the water cooler in the kitchen, on the balcony in front of the building, talking about little things that happened throughout the day, or challenges or stresses or fears. They're not here anymore, because people can't meet with you personally, saying these things need to be scheduled. And suddenly the closer connection with the colleagues is starting to reduce people feel more stressed. People fear the unknown. And they suddenly are not aware of everything that is happening in the company as they were before. which can lead to fear which can lead to uncertainty.



This is how you can contact Bozidar: Spirovski.b@gmail.com + https://www.beyondmachines.net



Want to connect with The Empowerment Portal?

We partner with HR and help small and medium-size organisations lead the way to sustainable recovery & growth. The Empowerment Portal provides a self-serve platform of screened learning & development content. It also provides lunch & learns and access to coaches and consultants to support HR and its employees. Book a Demo call with us CLICK HERE.



Website: www.theempowermentportal.com



Subscribe and review our Couch Talk Podcast

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Couch Talk. If this podcast has added value and helped you in your organisational journey, please head over to Spotify, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more organisations and HR and people leaders just like you.

After 25 years of engineering, law, real estate, mediation, fitness training, martial arts, and corporate law, Christina left her job to DIRECTLY make a difference in people’s lives. Two things happened, her 21-year marriage ended 6 years ago and COVID happened. Through her divorce, she realized that she had lost her true self and gathered the courage little by little to show her three children that their mom could put the pieces back together.



Show Notes



Listen to Christina’s story of Fight Club Meets Night Club, “we can't be our best selves for other people unless we are our best selves for ourselves. I was both physically and emotionally exhausted, but more exhausted with my life.” What it took was a pandemic! For me to really reflect on all my choices since I was a teenager, it was constantly doing things that were not on purpose and not my true passion. And instead, what society was expecting of me.

I was a corporate attorney for a Medical Products Division company and working long hours, but just kind of going through the grind. I had been an attorney for 25 years, but with you know, a 15-year break as a stay-at-home mom, full-time mom taking care of my children, and then got back into law. And you know, in the corporate attorney world, which I'm sure a lot of people know is a global company. So with timezone differences, I was on the phone literally from 5 am to about 8 pm without breaks. 

So, you know, the pandemic hit, all of a sudden all my kids are home, I'm home with them as well and we're all working from home.

I kept thinking to myself, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life?, and I like to say I was throwing my life away, which I actually was doing back, you know, 10 years earlier, as well, like, I'll just do it tomorrow, just stick it out, for another three years, when your kids leave, you know, the house, you know, just wait one more year, so you can get that promotion, or wait to know that, you know, wait till tomorrow waiting, this project is over. So, you know, it really took a lot of thinking, multitasking on my calls, to figure out what I really wanted to do, and, also thinking to myself, I really want to help people directly, as opposed to indirectly, you know, as a lawyer in a medical products company. I mean, arguably, you are helping people, but I'm not the engineer who invented the device. So I was just looking for something more.

So here I am now, you know, doing another thing that I didn't always want to do. Find out what Christina does next in our episode of Couch Talks!



This is how you can contact Christina: Tina@tinakilikina.com + www.rockboxfitness.com/scottsdale



Want to connect with The Empowerment Portal?

We partner with HR and help small and medium-size organisations lead the way to sustainable recovery & growth. The Empowerment Portal provides a self-serve platform of screened learning & development content. It also provides lunch & learns and access to coaches and consultants to support HR and its employees. Book a Demo call with us CLICK HERE.



Website: www.theempowermentportal.com



Subscribe and review our Couch Talk Podcast

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Couch Talk. If this podcast has added value and helped you in your organisational journey, please head over to Spotify, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more organisations and HR and people leaders just like you.

Natalia Blagoeva has been a C-level executive and entrepreneur for 20 years, and a Certified Management Consultant and Executive Coach for 10. Today, she is the Founder of the Global Community of Changemakers and Co-creators, WomenH2H, as well as a Change Whisperer©, Impact Co-creator, Thought Leader, Educator, and Disruptpreneur. What unites everything she does is her focus on creating opportunities for us to deepen our understanding of our reality, tap into our innate wisdom and collective intelligence, and consciously participate in shaping our own future.



Show Notes



Questions of whether or not online would work disappeared in an instant when COVID hit. No more debate, everyone is online and it’s working that way. We can energetically connect with each other around the world online.

Before COVID, we were denying the possibility of energetically connecting in an online way. Today, those objections are gone. COVID was the disrupter that enables us to learn the skills we need to be successful and thrive in the 21st Century.

More barriers to heart 2 heart connections in the physical world versus the online world. So many other factors come into play in the physical world that fuel our biases. Much more efficient and faster using the online mechanisms than having to do it all in the physical spaces.

Disrupting our “usual” ways has been a catalyst for the growth and development of new approaches, an awakening! It’s an opening of eyes and mindset to new horizons. COVID is only one example of disruptors happening all around us. Technology is another example and COVID was a push to remove the barriers in the uses of technology and the other new developments and disruptors around us.

It’s about the consciousness of using the disruptors to enable the changes to our lives we’ve always wanted to see.

Learn from irritation, or meeting an opposite opinion to ours. Lean into it and learn from it. Be able to analyze completely opposite world views and opinions. The better we are at understanding our own reality, the more connected we can be, and the more we can be open to looking at things with new eyes.



This is how you can contact Natalia: Blagoeva.natalia@gmail.com + https://www.womenh2h.com/



Want to connect with The Empowerment Portal?

We partner with HR and help small and medium-size organisations lead the way to sustainable recovery & growth. The Empowerment Portal provides a self-serve platform of screened learning & development content. It also provides lunch & learns and access to coaches and consultants to support HR and its employees. Book a Demo call with us CLICK HERE.



Website: www.theempowermentportal.com



Subscribe and review our Couch Talk Podcast

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the Couch Talk. If this podcast has added value and helped you in your organisational journey, please head over to Spotify, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more organisations and HR and people leaders just like you.