Known to a legion of trainees as ‘Mr Silveira’, two words to describe him are ‘boundless energy’!
A man who cultivated and outgrew multiple avatars, Silveira adopted the epithet ‘Knowledge Enabler’. His mission: helping people & organisations achieve their best outcomes.
He was a fan of Creative Visioning and it’s motive power in driving one towards higher achievement.
My Vision
I want to make a difference to myself and to people around me through positive beliefs, generosity & well being.
I want to assert my uniqueness & let it flower at every moment
by being open to myself & to others.I want to grow into new areas of competence & establish my brand
as an original thinker who creates Intellectual Property.I want to establish my reputation through books & intellectual fora where credibility is based on originality & performance.
Like in HRD in India, I will be known globally in the area of KM
Creative Visioning exercise by DMS during a Workshop for Mastek on 15 Apr 2003
and I am open to other avenues which I don’t know about today,
but which I could grow into, through wholeheartedness
in the years to come.
Visioning is a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. Towards his later years, he was actively researching KM, launched KM initiatives in at least two large organisations, and was working on a book on KM.
I personally benefitted from his programs and our association far more than I cared to admit. Filial bonds breed a level of familiarity that can discount the extent of this debt. It is easier to measure his impact on others. In multiple instances he transformed people from doubtful-starters to star-performers – people blossomed under his guidance. He took a personal interest in their development beyond the confines of a training engagement – providing sustained one-to-one feedback and mentoring without consideration.
As a behavioural (soft-skills) trainer his signature programmes were in the areas of:
- Interpersonal Skills (with a focus on workplace relationships)
- Leadership Development, Coaching & Mentoring of top leaders & senior management
- Transition Management (On-Boarding or Induction for MBAs & Engineer trainees)
- Emotional Intelligence
- Communication (including Presentation) Skills
- Faculty Development
Mr Silveira also coached organisational leaders and professionals in their journey of personal mastery.
As a personality his talent lay in the domains of Communicator, Relationship Builder (Connectedness), Empathy, Activator (getting things & people, started!), and Innovative Thinker.
With his first book, DMS made a name for himself in the field of HRD.
The book was used by IIM-Ahmedabad, the Academy of HRD and others for top management as well as a doctoral programme.
His books on behavioural change were used by companies like Wipro, Aditya Birla Group, Pfizer and colleges of public sector organisations in their training programmes.
In a previous avatar his scaled the peaks of journalism as Editor of the ‘Onlooker’ magazine and later the daily newspaper, ‘The Free Press Journal’.
In an earlier life, he taught at a school in Goa and later as Lecturer in English at KC College, Mumbai.
At a time when Goa University folded up under the Unversity of Bombay, he aced the Masters in English Literature as the Gold Medallist of his year.
Lessons
If his life were to be distilled into lessons, here is what would come to mind:
1) Constantly Re-invent yourself – Re-invent the future!
– Read!
– stay open to different things (empty your cup & adopt a learner’s attitude)
– open new files (a metaphor he supplied for tracking learning initiatives)
– learn new things
2) Do everything with 200% commitment and energy
– bring your ‘A’ game
3) Discipline, Organisation & Follow-through
– he credited the Jesuit priests at his Don Bosco boarding school — including an Italian priest (Fr Kochran? I’ve heard the name oft-repeated but it escapes me now) — for instilling these values. He would say, ‘The Fathers treated everyone the same. I wasn’t special, but I rose above the ordinary because I listened and learned from them.’
And rise above the ordinary he did! In an extra-ordinary way.
His meticulousness was legendary.
I’ve seen him belabouring for hours, over the content and structure of the workshop and training handouts, before ‘every’ workshop.
Be it his signature programmes, or newer bespoke engagements – he treated every engagement with the same care.
Every word on every slide (I was his PowerPoint slide maker and illustrator), every page in the trainee handout, would be considered and improved – with ideas that ocurred to him as kaizens (continuous improvements), during the course of his facilitating a previous workshop.
He would engage the Double-Loop Learning (Argyris) process – and his scribbled notes are everywhere – in his copy of training handouts, in notepads, slips of paper. Little pearls of wisdom and accumulated insights over so many experiences.
He liked to say, ‘I’m not worried if someone copies me…’
(from a corporate point of view, I was. And they did. Even his HRD book was pirated by someone in Jaipur – we believe through a known source – another story).
‘…I kaizen myself constantly. No two programmes are the same. So even if someone copies me – they are in the past.’
His career in journalism gave him phenomenal connections – but he never used them for personal gain.
When he struck out on his own – rather rashly I may add, but he was always of independent mind and spirit – launching his own political fortnightly, ‘NEWSMAG’, the inauguration dais was graced by the likes of Vasant Sathe, Piloo Modi and LK Advani.
Which brings me to another key aspect of his personality and lesson from his life:
* Value relationships and nurture your friendships.
He counted among his friends the ‘Who’s Who’ of Delhi’s political scene at one time:
- Madhavrao Scindia, whom he teasingly addressed ‘Maharaj’ (in the fashion of his personal staff), reportedly retorted to his friendly jibing with, ‘You may tease me all you want. But I am a Maharaj, I was born one!’
He was especially moved when Madhavrao Scindia passed. Acquired a bunch of commemorative stamps (philately is a hobby he passed onto me) and stuck them in his oft-used phone-book, as a memory of a friend. The collector in me would have preferred them in a stamp binder. Some friendships can be emotional.
- Rajesh Pilot (he sent me up to say ‘Hi’ to him at Delhi’s Balloon Mela this one time – I was a shy kid and just managed to point out Dad in his seat three rows back 🙂
He interviewed ex-prime ministers (Vajpayee, Indira Gandhi) and other luminaries. He never curried favour though.
Admittedly after leaving journalism, and later Delhi, he lost touch with the luminaries, but most of his friendships were lifelong, rich and deep. He would make time (amidst the swamp of work) and stay in touch – not the facile e-touch of today, but direct personal contact – phone calls, catch-ups, personal visits – be it family or friends.
To this day, people still remember him vividly.
His friendships could form in the most unusual ways – IPS officials on deputation on Goa, with whom he would have a face-off (situations created by his anti-authoritarian cock a snook attitude I’m given to understand). These selfsame confrontations would grow into mutual respect and deep friendships as narrated me by an ex-IGP and former Intelligence officer. That is to say, he could challenge you and still respect you.
On books, iconology & mortality
DMS was a voracious reader who took pride in learning and personal growth – his own and others’. He would often say:
“I’m a brahmin by work and choice — not just a brahmin by birth.”
(DM was never Casteist. This remark came in the context of people burnishing credentials but being quite hollow in learning)
His (and our family’s) resident deity, has been Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, as long as I remember. Next to our trusty bronze Ganesha, Dad installed Saraswati, the Goddess of learning. Two religious icons that were big to him.
Reading influences you in subtle ways.
Henry Charriere’s ‘Papillon’ was popular with his generation, perhaps due to the movie version starring Steve McQueen & Dustin Hoffman. Reading the book, I came across the phrase ‘kick the bucket’. 🙂 I’m amused because that particular phrase was big with him. We constantly used it allude to mortality as an event or concept. I’m not crediting the book with inventing the phrase, just saying how a book can popularize one and pass it into common usage.
A few fairly rigorous punishments would mean you couldn’t hold out to the end – you’d kick the bucket first.
Henri Charriere, Papillon (- p 348)
Another instance: in ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie’, the professor atrophying from ALS, holds a celebration of his life where his closest friends are invited to deliver eulogies for him while he is alive. Nobody gets to hear their eulogies when they are dead, so. The idea seemed to strike a note and he proposed holding one such on his sixtieth birth anniversary. I still remember the shocked look on an aunt — she chided him for proposing such a thing. Ironically he passed away a fortnight before reaching that personal milestone. Maybe he had an inkling of his fate.
A lot of this tribute in-memoriam is turning out to be recollected anecdotes. Some of the biographical sketch flows from his introduction as a trainer.
I started with the intention of a biographical note – but it would be devoid of personality unless I narrated the quirks of fate and personality that coloured his life.
On why I took so long to write it?
I sub-consciously avoided it. Every time I sat down to sift and declutter the tonne of notes & material he amassed, I felt pangs. Or maybe I was just plain lazy.
I also owe my gratitude to the Late Professor N Prabhaker Acharya, his colleague from his stint at KC College, and a lifelong friend, for his nudge thus:
Nikhil,
>> Prabhaker Acharya: 24 Sep 2016, 19:40
I just google-searched ‘Diogo Silvera’ and couldn’t believe my eyes when I found nothing.
His writings, his editing the Free Press Journal, heading Current’s Delhi Office – no mention of any of his several other achievements. Felt depressed.
He never sought fame, I know, but he had fame – but it is all unrecorded.