On this very insightful episode of Social Confoes, Jean-luc and Diego are joined by Sheetal Sujan. She is a co-founder of Lybra Training, Coaching and Consulting in Paramaribo, Suriname. She develops and facilitates tailor-made trainings for organizations in areas of self-development, team development, leadership development, customer service, communication, team building and emotional intelligence. Furthermore, she has more than 12 years of experience as a personal and professional development trainer and her goal is to positively motivate individuals to strengthen their true talents and skills, overcome their challenges, and get the most out of their personal and work life.

She is passionate about helping individuals and teams thrive in their personal and work relationships, steering individuals to understand the personal impact they make on their lives and the lives of others.

Check out Lybra and sign up for their next classes.

You can also connect with Sheetal through her socials:

• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Facebook

Episode Overview

• 0:00 – Introduction with some tears
• 5:33 – How Sheetal ended up in Suriname?
• 11:26 – A deeper appreciation of Indian culture through Suriname
• 23:32 – Making her husband take the MBTI test
• 30:15 – What did the our results tell you about us
• 37:04 – A deeper look at perceivers and judgers in MBTI
• 45:30 – How do you prevent yourself from abusing your powers
• 53:57 – Taking the business from offline to online during Covid
• 1:18:41 – MBTI demographics, Is there an age restriction?
• 1:28:01 – Thoughts on why women cancel more often?
• 1:33:25 – Closing off

Video Version of the Episode

The Hosts

• Diego Ameerali
• Jean-Luc van Charante

Feel free to join our Discord Server.

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Full Transcript

Diego: [00:00:28] Good evening after noon. Good morning. Wherever you are in the world. We are back with another live episode of social compost. I hope you got your warm beverage with you because we’re going to get a little social tonight.

Jean-luc: [00:01:04] So Diego, this is amazing. We’re not, we’re not even up yet. And Gregory is already going.

Let’s go people Gregory. Thank you so much for tuning and once again, and We have a special guest tonight. So you want me to give a short introduction of my first experience with our, with our guests of tonight?

Diego: [00:01:25] Yeah, that’s do that. What does your first interaction?

Jean-luc: [00:01:29] So our guests of tonight is Sheetal Sujan and she runs a business with her husband.

It’s called Libra and Libra is a place where, I mean, the training sessions are really, really good. And why am I saying that? I I’ve said it once or twice before. It was the first time for me in, in a training session that all of my senses were being pushed. Like usually when you’re in training session, you just see and you hear stuff, that’s kind of how it works.

You see something, you hear something that’s basically the traditional set of when you fall in training, but then when you start. Getting other senses that come in, fall off like feeling. And it was kind of, I’m not saying all of my senses were kind of getting like I was connecting with all of them, but it was definitely more than two.

And that was a really, really special experience. And then, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m okay with admitting that I cried during one of those sessions, I actually cried during one of those sessions because there was some emotional energy that had, I had been holding it back, you know, at a certain point. So that’s just something I really want people to understand, because I think it’s really special when you going to a training session and there’s another dimension to the training session and That’s something I, I just want to share, because for me it was weird being in Suriname, getting a session at such a high level compared to even outside of Suriname, compared to Europe, compared to the US and basically that’s my introduction.

She’s also a great lecture. We both teach at FHR and the, our students have been very, very fond of her as well. And now also she is very, very much involved in the digital scene and she has strand four has transformed our business as well. Partly due to due to COVID to become not only offline, like when you have a training from Libra connector, but also becoming a voice for the introverts online.

So without further ado, we’d like to introduce Sheetal welcome to the show. Sheetal

Sheetal: [00:03:55] Hello everyone. Thank you for having me here.

Diego: [00:03:58] Glad to have you here. And I must say that was a really, really a mouth full of an intro that was still very, I think, just touching the tip of the iceberg from what I’m gathering here. And I have the first thing I’m wondering should I be scared that we are going to draw another tear tonight? 

Sheetal: [00:04:21] What he just said was like, okay. Wow. You know, I had no idea I did that, but I’m glad that the training had that impact on you Jean-luc so thank you for that introduction.

Jean-luc: [00:04:35] Yeah. So, so first before we start, because you want to, we want to introduce you to the fan base. So we want to tell you a little bit who is here as well. Tevin has already dropped in saying good evening. Viraisha also saying yes, and definitely explained to everyone. And Gregory actually mentioned that he missed last week, so he made sure that he’s joining us. We have people from all over the Caribbean.

So thank you for joining in as well to add from Barbados. And Richenel now he he agrees with me. She is so good and a special shoutout from another Gregory power to the introverts. So the first thing I noticed, Sheetal when, when we are doing a sessions at Libra is like, okay, is she from here? Is she from here? She speaks English very fluently is she actually from here? And then we found out that you were actually born somewhere else and raised somewhere else. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about how did you end up in Suriname.

Sheetal: [00:05:33] Well, you know, when I think back, I actually moved to Suriname three times in my life.

And let me, let me start from the very beginning. I won’t go into all the details. So I was born in India. For any of you who are wondering, my parents are from India, they were born and raised there. And I was born there as well. And not too long after I was born, we moved to the Philippines. Actually, my brother, my younger brother was born there and we were there for several years and moved back to India for a little while, moved back to the Philippines.

So the first 10 years of my life, it was like back and forth, back and forth. And when I was 10 years old, my dad had already moved to Suriname. Cause he was like literally traveling around the world to find a home for us. And he came to Suriname and he’s like, I love this place. We’re moving here. This is where we’re going to call home.

And then I told my dad, there’s no way I’m coming, because if I have to learn another language, I’m not coming. I was struggling in school because I had to learn from one language to another, to another. And was, I was under 10. He’s like, no, no, no, there is an English school here. You don’t have to learn Dutch.

I said, perfect. Let’s go. Of course. I said that because I thought he’s probably going to want to move somewhere else again. And that’s going to drive me insane. But then for him, this was home. And he has been here since like a little over 30 years, like a long, long time, but I moved, we moved. Then I went to an English school.

So hence my Dutch has not been great. I learned Dutch through friends through work and very conversationally. I’ve never learned it. You know, at school, I lived here for a couple of years and then Moved again. I went to Trinidad for a year and that’s a different story. I was like in the process of looking for schools and things like that.

And Trinidad was the closest my dad would like send me. He’s like, you know, we’ve got family there. You can go there. And I really want it to go to the States. And then, you know, we had a little family thing after that, where I had to move back home. So something happened in the family. I wanted to support my family and came back to Suriname.

And I stayed on here and I started working with my dad for a couple of years in retail. And then finally got an opportunity to leave, to go to the States to study was there for five years. And my husband brought me back to Suriname. So I’ve been literally back and forth for the last couple of years. But for me, Suriname is my home.

I’ve lived here more than I have lived anywhere else. And I can’t imagine living anywhere else or raising my family anywhere else.

Jean-luc: [00:08:17] Yeah, so you’re technically Surinamese, so we can run, we do a nationality draft. We can actually claim you as one of us. That’s good to know

Diego: [00:08:27] after being forced to move so much from the Philippines learning languages and kind of your initial reaction being sure. They have an English school let’s go there. What made you feel like that Suriname is home for you after being here a while?

Sheetal: [00:08:46] Initially it was, it took some time to get used to the place now, after moving from the Philippines to Suriname of course, when you get off the airport, all you see is jungle, right?

And I’m like, where has my father brought me? Like, I was used to seeing skyscrapers in tall buildings and, you know you know, as a kid, you look out for the McDonald’s and the KFCs and stuff like that, because that’s what you see everywhere. I come here and I’m like, okay, what place is this? And where have you brought me?

So it took some time to get used to the fact that everything was so natural around me. And then, you know, in school was different in the culture was different. But I love the fact that there were so many different cultures and had so many friends from different parts of the world that I no longer felt like the foreigner because everywhere I went in the world, I was always the foreigner.

I was always the one looking like the odd one, especially in the Philippines. I always had the longest nose in the class and people used to make fun of me in class. And when I was in India, I was still the foreigner because I couldn’t speak Hindi. And I didn’t understand the language at the time. Cause had just come from the Philippines.

So I always felt like left out. But then when I came here, everyone was different. No one looked the same. I was not the odd one out. So I felt at home immediately, I was like, this isn’t, this is home for me because I’m not the only different one here. So, and then, you know, school, life and everything else just happened. And then you kind of get used to, you know, then it’s home.

Diego: [00:10:18] Yeah, I think that’s one of the powerful, I guess, traits or gems that people take for granted here that diversity and that multicultural group of people. And I think in the Caribbean, in this region, we are one of the most diverse, even in how small we are.

So you have this density, the highest dense, diverse at the, I guess, in the region

Sheetal: [00:10:47] The nice thing was even, you know, having born in India and having my. You know, the, the Indian culture in my home, I was able to understand more of my culture living here, you know, from the dancing and the movies and, you know, all of that.

I, it it’s as if I had India right here. So it was like having the best of all the worlds in one place and not having to miss India at all. So for me, that was a plus still growing up in a country and still being part of my culture being here. So, and so, you know, I always loved it.

Diego: [00:11:26] Is there any one thing that comes to mind that kind of enhanced or clarified your understanding of Indian culture for coming here?

Sheetal: [00:11:38] So when I was in India, I learned. Hindi while I was there. So I understood the language. I started to get to know more about religion and culture and stuff like that. I was just about eight or nine years old, but when I came here and I need friends and I, you know, there, there was an Indian community and stuff, and I heard that they were going to, there were dance lessons.

There was an Indian cultural center. So I was really excited. I said, this is what I’ve always wanted to do. So to ensure that I felt part of my own culture, I started going to classical dancing. I did performances. I even, you know, learn Indian singing and everything. So I felt as if, you know, I really belonged.

And that’s one thing I loved about my childhood, all the Indian dancing I ever did all the years. It was a lot of fun. And, you know, especially with all the friends that I had, those are like the best memories I’ve had growing up.

Jean-luc: [00:12:34] It’s actually, Diego’s very funny because I think last year I walked into Sheetal dancing as well.

You walked into at that spot at the first floor at that spot. Yeah, you’re right.

Sheetal: [00:12:47] Yes, yes, yes, yes. There was an event going on and then I saw you walking down the stairs. Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve always loved dancing, so I’m glad that having lived in Suriname, I’ve been able to do all of that and so much more.

Jean-luc: [00:13:02] So was it, was it hard when you, the last time you moved back to Suriname because you studied in the US and yeah. It’s at a certain point you make a decision, like where do you continue? Especially your business or professional life. You make the decision as well. So of course your husband had some influence, maybe a lot of influence, but I was the decision made to say like, okay, moving to Suriname now, after our studies.

Sheetal: [00:13:31] So we, so indeed when I moved to the States I had no intentions of coming back. I wanted to move out. I wanted to start a career elsewhere. I said, you know what? I’ve lived in Suriname for a long time. And I, I did not leave immediately after high school, again, really trying to convince my dad, you know, because his intentions was to get me married, being the typical Indian father being brought up by Indian parents.

As soon as I hit 18, they were like, okay, well let’s find a guy and get her married, but that was never my intention. I always wanted to study. I wanted to go abroad while I was still in Suriname working for my dad. I was doing my college online. So if you’ve ever heard of the university of Phoenix, that was one of the first schools that went online.

And I said, I don’t care if I have to do this online for the rest of my life, I’m finishing my education. While my parents are gonna look and, and talk about me getting married and stuff like that. So two years into that, I applied to FIU without his knowledge and with a lot of fear, you know, and I got it within like three months, they told me, Hey, you’re in.

And I think he just did that for fun. I said, let me see if I get it. And I did with a lot of here, I told him, I said, listen, you know, I’ve done two years online. And it meaning, well, you know, I’m in. And I even applied for housing and everything. I paid for everything. I had no idea I was going. I was like, you know, he’ll say yes or he’ll say no, but it’s worth trying.

He didn’t say anything for three months. And then randomly one day, he’s like, so when are you packing your bags? And I was like, I can go. He’s like, yeah, you can go. I didn’t ask him a second time. I’m like pack the bags, let’s leave. And I was often Miami and I did my bachelors. From all the five years that I was there, I worked at the university.

So I had different jobs and I moved up very quickly and I have to honestly say everything that I ever did there, all those jobs. Cause I got into training, coaching by accident. This was not planned. What I’m doing today was not planned. If someone told me 15 years ago, Sheetal you’re going to be a trainer, you’re going to coach people.

You’re going to do online trainings and stuff. I would have laughed. I said, there’s no way I’m going to do that. I don’t like standing in front of people. I don’t like talking to people. I’m an introvert. I like my quiet. Then I’ll sit behind a cubicle on a computer and do my thing. But little did I know that the universe kept throwing things in my path and throwing all these teaching opportunities by accident.

And I was like, okay, sure. And it was me helping out other people, you know, like filling in for others in, in, in the. Office. I was working at the career services office cause we coached students. We coached, sorry, coached university staff. We did workshops and stuff like that. I would fill in every now and then sometimes there was orientation and they say Sheetal

hey, we need someone to go talk to the students. Do you think you can go? And I would say, all right, fine, I’ll go. And just like that, I’m coaching people. And I was like, wait, how did this happen? So all those years that I was there, I was studying business administration. I studied human resource manager management.

I totally was either thinking to work corporate. Or eventually start my own thing, but it never had to do with training and coaching. And I remember that after going through the process of coaching and my first job, I had just graduated with my masters and I was promoted to the finance position of the same department.

The finance person wanted to retire and she asked for an early retirement and they needed someone to fill in really quickly. Now I did my bachelor’s in finance, so they asked me, do you think you can fill in temporarily. Till we find someone else since you have a finance background, because everyone at career services either had a psychology or social studies or English, you know, that kind of, I was the only one with a business background who was in that office.

So I said, yeah, sure. I’ll fill in. So I went through all the programs and the workshops, I learned the job, and then eventually the offered me the job. They said, Hey, we actually love what you’re doing. Do you think you can take it off? I said, sure. You know, it’s my background. Let me do this. And when I was in that position, I realized how much I missed teaching and coaching and being around students and sharing information and knowledge.

And I was miserable. I loved, I mean, I was good at what I did, but I didn’t feel fulfilled anymore. Like crunching numbers and doing budgets and stuff like that. I used to come home feeling exhausted and tired. I had already been trained in the Myers Briggs, and I know you want to talk about personalities in business.

We’ll go into that. So I was really missing that. And then eventually my director was like, Hey, we want to do a team building, but we can’t hire someone on the outside. Do you want to take this on? Do you want me to do our team building? And I was like, why is she asking me this? She’s like, I don’t know.

I somehow have faith. If you can do this for us,

you know, I was so scared. I was like, no, they’re not going to like this. They’re going to absolutely hate this. She’s like, no, I want you to do it. Have confidence, make it happen. I was like, okay, I’ll make it happen. And how was a nervous wreck trying to like put this together and everything was MBTI related.

They really wanted me. They wanted a refresher on Myers-Briggs and do a team building because I had just become a practitioner. So I prepared, I did the team building and I literally got a standing ovation. All my colleagues came to me afterwards. Oh, we loved it. We had so much fun. This was amazing. You should do this for a living.

And that’s when it hit. I was. Like, I guess this is my calling because I need to start thinking about this now to go back to your question. I had to tell you the story to give you a little bit of a background. How did this happen? While I was in Miami. I started dating Krieshan now, Krieshan. I knew him since we were kids, but we had not been in touch for many, many years.

He was my brother’s childhood friend. So when I was living in Suriname, back in the early nineties, he used to come over to the house and hang out with my brother. They played video games and basketball and stuff like that. And no, I did not notice him at all. In fact, I think he was noticing me. So I found out many, many, many years later that he used to have a crush on me back then, but I never paid attention.

When did this happen? But long story short we lost touch I mean, he, he went abroad and stuff like that, and he lost touch with my brother as well. And when I was in Miami, he got in touch with my brother. And through my brother, he got in touch with me on Facebook. So yay. Facebook, I guess. Thanks Mark.

And we started messaging each other and I was like, Oh yeah, Krieshan you know what I mean? I remember him because he’s my brother’s friend. And I think as soon as he found out I was still single, the man did not wait. He did not waste time. He was like, if I don’t do it now, it’s never going to happen. So, yeah.

So we started having a long distance relationship. Eventually the marriage talk came up and we were ready to sell. I was just about finishing my masters. And then the question came, where are we going to move? He was living in Brussels at the time I was living in Miami. He was not inserting Suriname. He had been abroad for 10 years as well.

He was in Holland and then in Brussels. And

Diego: [00:21:20] so just to clarify, you guys didn’t meet up at all at Miami yet during no, no, no.

Sheetal: [00:21:26] We did. We did. We did, he did come visit me and I, you know, we, we met up with each other before the marriage talks happen, but when eventually things got really serious, of course the question was what happens after marriage?

Who’s going to move where, right. Because I had. I was settled in Miami. I had my job, he was settled in Brussels. He had his job and it did not take long for us to say simultaneously that we were going to move back to Suriname. It just happened very, very like naturally. And we knew that it would be perfect for us together.

It would be the best place for us to raise our family. His parents are here. My parents are here when we had children, it would be perfect for us and for them. So we’re like, okay, we don’t know what we’re going to do in Suriname, but let’s move to Suriname. And that’s how it happened. We came back to Suriname to get engaged officially with the family and everything.

He moved back. Six months later, I moved. Yeah. I moved back. Six months later, we got married while we were engaged. We had already registered Libra. So it was official. It was a on in KKF everything was done immediately after the engagement. I moved back to Miami to pack up my stuff, to, you know, wrap things up at work.

I came back in may, we got married in July and I started working with him in August. So that’s everything in a nutshell.

Jean-luc: [00:22:56] Wow. Wow.

Diego: [00:23:00] That story sounds so, too good to be true. That everything just lined up. So I got to ask what, I guess, the intuition in you, how do you process that part of like, you know, this clicks and what goes through your mind, but what, where do you feel to realize that?

I guess.

Sheetal: [00:23:28] I’m still processing it. Well,

Jean-luc: [00:23:32] There’s a story. Did you or did you not make him do an MBTI test?

Sheetal: [00:23:40] You know I would do that. Right. When, when, when when we started talking and, you know, I mean, of course he shared who was interested in me and, you know, we wanted to see where it would go. The first thing I asked him, do you think you’d be open to do on Myers, Briggs test?

And he’s like, what’s that? I said, don’t worry. It’s nothing just take the test. I’ll tell you about it later. So I sent him the assessment and He took the assessment. And then I started explaining to him what it meant. Luckily he’s also an introvert, I’m an introvert. So I was like, okay, perfect. You know, we’re not going to drive each other crazy or drag each other out of the house.

We are just happy being at home, you know, and just, you know not having to deal with trying to get each other out of the house. So, but there, there are other things that are opposite in our personalities. And that’s what I was curious about. And let me tell you, thank God for Myers Briggs, because it has saved us from so many arguments that we’ve never had, just because I knew where he was coming from.

And he understood where I was coming from that when we would have conversations, I’d be like, okay, he’s talking about the future. And he knows I’m talking because I’m a past and present person. He’s a present future person. And oftentimes this is where we have our clashes where he’s in the future, I’m in the present and I’m very like realistic and practical.

And I always find solutions for now. He’s looking like 10 years, five years, he’s all he believes in the aliens and the spaceships and all that stuff. He’s like all into that. And he got me in that world and I brought him into my reality. So we both kind of meshed in each other’s world. When we got to know each other.

And let me tell you, it helped us as a couple. It has helped us as business partners. It has helped us tremendously as parents. And if it weren’t for that, I think we would have driven each other crazy. At some point, I think we love each other, but I get him. He gets me and we knowing exactly what’s happening when, when something goes off.

So Myers-Briggs has been a lifesaver. I always tell people you want to know about your partner. Don’t find out their horoscope. That’s not gonna tell you anything. Find out their Myers Briggs come and sit with me. Let’s talk together. I will tell you what’s going well and what you guys need to work on.

And you’re going to save yourself a lot of arguments.

Jean-luc: [00:26:17] So I didn’t really run or jump into that as a, do you want to go to the comments from the beginning? Or do you want us to go to the question of Gregory?

Diego: [00:26:28] Yeah, let’s just do some quick shout outs. Cause we have someone joining us here, Krieshan and he says 143 questions.

That’s quite a lot.

Sheetal: [00:26:48] Questions are 143 questions that you have to go through. So he’s like ed, he always says that. He said you made me answer a hundred, four and 43 questions before you answered the one question. I’ll will you marry me? So, yeah.

Diego: [00:27:05] It’s a very specific number as well. And you got Joseph enjoying the story so far.

Keep rolling. Marvin says amazing story. And then this comes. Did the question of Gregory and I guess, do the Myers-Briggs test, how accurate or how much should people read into it? And from your personal experience, it seems it’s has worked great for you. But yeah, as Greg is says, are personality tests somehow cheating the game because it’s kind of looking at someone’s report card instead of being us flexible human.

Sheetal: [00:27:43] It’s not like that the Myers-Briggs is a tool like anything else, right? You can use the tool for good. You can do use the tool, however you want, but the Myers Briggs, the whole purpose of the Myers Briggs is to understand differences in people. If I’m an introvert. It helps me understand extroverts.

If I’m an intuitive, it helps me understand sensors. It just means that I get to understand what’s different about you and see things from your perspective. That’s really the purpose of the Myers breaks. And because it’s a tool, if we use it, we’ll see value in it. If we don’t use it, you don’t see the value in it.

And the more you use it. The more you’ll get these aha moments. I get what you’re coming from. I get why you’re saying that. And you know, what happens with the Myers-Briggs when people get to know each other’s personalities, a lot of times they’ll realize, okay. So I get now that you haven’t been trying to irritate me or frustrate me or stress me out, this is you being in your natural self, and this is just how you are, and you haven’t been doing this because you’re trying to piss me off to just put it in simple terms.

And that’s what I try to help people with. No, one’s trying to irritate you or stress you through their personality. Some people, you know, that that’s how they view things. But if you’ve been looking at life like this, you start looking at life like this, you know, and then you start see things from other people’s perspective.

You don’t have to agree with everyone. You can just accept that this is how they are, and this is how they function. And it helps. It helps in every relationship. Imagine if you have a boss who’s similar to you, you’ll get along. But if you’re opposites and you can’t tell what he or she wants, it’s going to drive you insane.

When, when you do the Myers Briggs, and you understand each other, you understand each other’s perspective and you meet each other halfway. So no, it’s not cheating the system. I look at it as it’s a shortcut way of getting to know someone without having to go through a lot of pain and a lot of misery.

And so many years of, you know, mistakes that you could have found out very easily in the beginning, just by taking a simple assessment to get to know them better. That’s all.

Diego: [00:30:07] So it kind of cuts the fat between communication and having that awareness of each other. Yeah.

Sheetal: [00:30:13] It’s all about communication.

Diego: [00:30:15] You mentioned something very interesting there.

The opposite, for example, if a boss who is the opposite of you you know, having that clash and just for fun before today, yesterday, we looked at the simplified test, I guess, just to see where we’re at. And when I shared my results, you immediately said, Oh, you’re like 70% opposite of Jean-lucand I didn’t even know Jean-luc’s results yet.

So I guess what did that tell you? Coming into this conversation today with us being this opposite.

Sheetal: [00:30:53] It told me that Diego probably planned everything ahead of time and said, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. That’s going to happen. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get here. I’m already kind.

And guess what? The link went up before Jean-luc even thought about it. And he’s like, Oh, okay, thank you. I’m glad you already did it. I was thinking about it, but you did it. And that’s typically going to happen in your relationship that you’re the planner, he’s the go with the flow guy and you know, we’ll see what happens when it happens.

And he’s the extrovert in your, I’m sorry, can I put this on, you know, I get her put this out there.

I mean, he’s the introvert, you’re the extrovert. And then he’ll be like thinking things very deeply before he. says things. And Jean-luc look, we’ll just fit. Whatever comes through his mind. He’s like, what do you think? I just thought about it. What do you think? And then Diego will be like, wait, which one? This one or that one, or the next thing that you’re going to say, that’s, what’s going to happen in your conversations because of the opposite type.

And it’s very interesting. I mean, tell me if I’m wrong because I know that’s the kind of conversations you guys are having without knowing either one of you just because I know you’re tight and it never fails. I kid you not, it never feels I’ve done workshops for so many years. And one of the exercises I do a lot is with the judgers and the perceivers and judgers are the typical planners to the point they make things happen.

They’re always scheduling stuff. The perceivers are like, well, we’ll see what happens. They’ll make the list, but they won’t look at it again. And they’ll rush last minute to get stuff done. They both get stuff done. And I always have this one exercise. I have these two people do. I kid you, not every single time I have the judgers and perceivers do it.

The answers are like almost identical. And we always have such a laugh in our workshops when this happens, because they’re like, wait, how did you, how do you know this? I said, the personality does not lie. It just does not lie. There are just certain natural traits we have that, you know, comes to us naturally.

And let me just share this with everyone, right? There’s no personality assessment in the world that will ever measure your entire personality. It just does not exist, but the Myers-Briggs just takes four dimensions. It measures that because that’s just the easiest things to measure and it’s more obvious.

And it’s things that we just typically do naturally. We’re just not aware of it. Unless someone points it out and then you’re like, Oh yeah, I do that. Oh yeah, that you’re right. This does does happen. I tend to do that. And it’s really just bringing that up in the surface. So people are more aware. They have more self-awareness that they make better decisions, knowing that about themselves.

That’s all that it comes down to. And it’s amazing what groups can do when they know this about each other.

Jean-luc: [00:33:49] So she’s excited as well. We have another and MBTI for the, when we have people getting in from LinkedIn as well. You’re getting a shout out Sheetal though, from a lover and then a question from Ro-Ann so should you change your behavior to suit the other person? They understand that you are just who you are.

Sheetal: [00:34:08] So. The Myers Briggs works two ways like communication is a two way road, right? Yes. You should understand the other person and understand where they’re coming from. I’m not saying that you have to change yourself for the other person that in any communication and in any relationship, we have to learn to become flexible and adjust when needed.

Depending on the conversation. So typically in our personality, if we’re introvert, being an introvert is not always going to serve us for the rest of our life. And I know that for a fact, because post COVID has taught me so many things I needed to pay attention to. If I remain an introvert, it was, it was going to hurt my business.

Big time, which means I needed to be learning extroverted qualities. I need to learn from other extroverts. I needed to shadow extroverts. I needed to understand, well, how is it that they give their energy so up and how are they able to be so expressive and stuff like that. There were things I needed to learn and you’ll kind of enjoy the best of both worlds.

So as an introvert, when you start talking to an extrovert, you can become a bit more extroverted to communicate better with them. And if they know you are an introvert, they adjust to you. When both people adjust to each other, the conversation becomes more interesting. So when groups and teams, leaders, and their subordinates and so on.

Know this about each other. They will find ways to meet each other halfway. So if you know, you have an introvert colleague who are, who is less likely to, you know, open up in a meeting, you send them an email and say, Hey, send me an email and let me know your thoughts. And you will know exactly what’s on their mind because they had an opportunity to send it via email versus, you know, and then if you know, you’re an introvert and you have extroverted colleagues, but you’re constantly sending them emails and they’re not responding it’s because they don’t like emails.

So you’ll find a way you will have to meet them halfway and say, listen, come to my office, let’s have a chat. And then they’ll spill the beans and they’ll get stuff out of their head. Because, you know, they’re an extrovert and that’s how you get stuff out of them. And when we know this about each other, we will meet them halfway.

So sometimes yes, you have to make that adjustment. Sometimes you have to switch things up, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to take you out of your natural element. You’re always going to be a natural introvert or a sensor or intuitive because that’s how you function in the world. But we can’t function on one perspective.

We need to look at all perspectives and we need to find our ways to adjust with others. So that way we all communicate better with each other. I hope that answers the question.

Diego: [00:37:04] Yes, it definitely does. And usually when we talk about this, though, It really comes to the most common, I guess, differentiate differentiator is introvert extrovert.

And you mentioned before we cover the Myers-Briggs covered like four dimensions and obviously it’s not your whole personality. So introvert extrovert aside, could you talk a bit more about to us about, I guess the I’m going to just grab one of the others judging and prospecting. perceiving

Sheetal: [00:37:47] so that is, that is the last dimension mentioned.

So you have the introversion extroversion, that’s all the way on top in the middle, you have mental functions. And at the end we have the judging perceiving, and that’s basically how we orient ourselves in the world. And I usually use this in my productivity training, so I teach productivity programs and I often tell people this.

How we manage our time, has to do with our personality as well. On a lot of times, people don’t believe me. They’re like, what do you mean? I mean, I knew, I know I need to work a schedule and they need to work a plan and this needs to happen. But here’s the thing. Some people struggled with it and they struggle with it because it doesn’t come to them naturally.

And some people are natural planners, which means that for them, for them to feel sane, they need to wake up knowing what am I doing at eight o’clock and nine o’clock and 10 o’clock, what am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing next week? They have everything planned and organized. They will make sure they have a list and a checklist.

And the funny thing is say, they’re doing a bunch of things on their to-do list. If they did something outside of their to-do lists, they’re going to make sure to put it back, to write it on the to-do list, just to check it off. And for my judges out there, I know you’re out there. I know you recognize this about yourself, that.

If you don’t make a plan, it’s going to drive you insane. This just comes to you naturally. And I’m sure planners were made by judgers for sure. On the other hand, we have the perceivers. They like to go with the flow. They like, you know, we’ll see what happens. And then we’ll just, you know, the, they make decisions moment by moment.

And even if they make a plan, they’re not always going to go with it unless they know they have to. And being with you usually finish things at the deadline, not before the deadline. So they’re like spontaneous, adventurous, and anything could happen to just about any time. They don’t like a routine. They don’t want to do the same things at the same time, but they do that because they know certain things have to be done.

So that’s kind of forced on their personality and also the way, you know, the world is. And if you compare Holland and Suriname, right, I’m sure you can tell which country is very judging. And which country is very perceiving, just think about, I don’t have to answer that question. Right. And sometimes our, our culture, our, where we’re brought up can dictate our personality.

It can shape how we are, the way we were brought up. And if we don’t allow that to dictate us, we just go by with our natural personality. So, you know, it’s, it’s always very interesting to learn this about ourselves. So I have a lot of fun sharing this stuff in our training programs, especially in my productivity programs.

And then when people like now I get why I hate making plans because I’m just not a planner. And then they know they have to make the extra effort they have to put in the time and that it doesn’t bother them anymore, that it doesn’t come to them. Naturally. In fact, it’s kind of like a relief. Like I can find me being my own skin.

And feel okay with it and not feel pressured that I’m not a planner. And that’s really the goal feel comfortable in your skin that it’s okay to be an introvert that you’re not weird because you can’t have a conversation in public. It’s perfectly normal people. You just have to practice extroversion.

That’s all like, it gets easier. Trust me,

Diego: [00:41:26] I just had a revelation or observation. So I I’ve been doing this. At least the test I shared with you guys beforehand every two years. So first time I did, it was 2017, I guess. And then I redid it in 2019 and I noticed that I went from. Prospect perceiving to judging that that skill shifted for me.

And I just realized that that was the time I started reading more books and Jean-luc is going to laugh because he knows where I’m going with this on habit creation, habit building, and that’s where I guess four hour work week and the atomic habits came in. And when I redid, the test in 2019, and again in 2021, before I send it the judging scale it’s shifted more towards judging.

So over time, that kind of change for me. If I look back at myself. So I just realized that now, and I, I thought I share it just. Having realized that during this

Sheetal: [00:42:37] you did, was you trained your judging side. I mean, we have both sides in our personality. It’s just that one set comes more naturally and the other side needs to be trained.

So then what happens when we train the other side, we use, we use whichever side we want, when, you know, when, when, when the circumstances are needed. Like, for example, I like my Mondays to Fridays plan. I’m a judger, I’m a downright judger, very, very strong judger things have to be planned, but when the weekend comes, I, you know, tone it down.

I don’t plan stuff. You know? We, we do things randomly. We don’t plan what we’re going to do or where we’re going to be. And. That kind of balances things. If I had to be a perceiver all week, I would go crazy, like absolutely crazy because it’s just not my natural state. So, you know, you find a way to balance it and then you, you, you appreciate the other side and that’s how you start appreciating other people of opposite sides as well.

And there can only be good things from this.

Jean-luc: [00:43:42] Yeah, that’s funny. It’s really funny. So for me personally, I’ve always been a ENFP. I’ve always been that I’ve always been that, but the funny thing is that when I first did the test, I was really. Like building my skills for sensing and really building my skills.

So I was, I was moving more towards centered. Like I wasn’t like with a test, it was kind of difficult. I had to redo the test a couple of times you probably, you or Krieshan probably told me like what you feel and not what you think is the correct answer, because I was really at that time moving towards the skills.

And then a couple of years later, I think in 2016, 2017, I started seeing like, listen, I’m going to be myself and focus on my strengths. So when I redid the test this year, or actually this week, it was much clear, like it was defined, it wasn’t centered anymore because I’m also at peace with, with the person that I am.

So I know, I know judging is important. I make a very big deal out of it, making sure. That my perceiving side doesn’t affect our company because that’s also one thing. So I’m aware of it, but I’m also accepting that and I’m perceiving. But I think that, that the thing that I struggle with most is, is feeling versus thinking, especially in, especially in arguments, because recently this week I caught myself in an argument going totally towards the feeling side, towards what people feel, what people think instead of the rationale.

And I was arguing with a thinker and it completely made me go bonkers. It completely completely made me go bonkers. And after I shared the, my test scores with, with the group today and they all revealed their MBTI realized like, this is why it was driving me so insane because I wasn’t getting movement from the other side because I was trying to get.

To get a response, a feeling response, which just wasn’t ever going to happen. And then really, it really vested me a lot. But jumping to the next question, because we do want to know Sheetal how do you prevent yourself from abusing your powers? 

Sheetal: [00:46:05] I would, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t look at that as abusing because every time I have you abuse it when you use it to hire and fire people. And this is how personality assessments have been abused over time. And I always tell people. Never ever use it to hire someone or fire someone or use it to make a decision about someone that’s never been the intention about personality assessments.

This is why it’s also dangerous to take online free assessments because they’re not always accurate. So I know a lot of people take it from these free sites. They’re not always accurate and people don’t always understand the meaning behind it. And what happens is that people start abusing what they receive online, and then they don’t have a practitioner explaining what that, what it really means, how to use it, the beauty behind personalities and how we can really bring out the best in people. This is why you always need a practitioner to guide you. This is why people are being trained, you know, to do this, to share this because. This can be abused. People can use this to their benefit and say, well, if you’re an introvert and I have a marketing company, you’re not going to be good for me because you’re an introvert and that’s absolutely wrong.

Let me tell you this. As an introvert, I have done so much more marketing in the last two years. I was like, Whoa, I never thought I was capable of this. And we bring out the best in ourselves by not pigeonholing. So it’s not to pigeonhole you to a personality. That’s never been the intention of Myers Briggs

it’s just to make you more aware of what you may already know to help you confirm that this is you to help you be comfortable in your own skin and tell you it’s okay to be like this. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. And it’s okay if you’re a feeler. It’s okay. If you’re a perceiver, it’s okay.

If you’re a thinker, but. Variety’s the spice of life. Let’s look, what is on the other side, let’s explore extroversion. Let’s explore being a thinker. Let’s explore being a perceiver and what it’s like to be that kind of person, because here’s the good news. We have both in our personalities. It’s just that one side comes more naturally to us and the other side, and you have to put a little effort and we have to work.

But when we’re aware that we have to put the effort, we’re going to put the effort we work towards it. And then both start. Both sides starts to come. Naturally. If Diego, for example, was a natural perceiver and he didn’t read those books and he didn’t start thinking about atomic habits and the four hour workweek, which by the way, are all excellent books.

I love those books and I’ve learned a lot from them as well. You don’t start changing your habits or changing what you know, you need to work on, which is your non preferences, because guess what? We can’t live a one-sided personality in this world. We need both. We have all of this around us. We have introverts and extroverts.

We have intuitives andsensors. We need to think both dimensions. In fact, 3d 4d even sometimes. And if we’re only thinking one sided, we’re missing out on the other side of the world. And that’s really the point of MBTI know who you are. And this is why I don’t know, Jean-luc if you remember it in the training, I always told everyone answered the questions based on how you are comfortable, not how you’re supposed to be now, not how your boss wants you to be not how you’re expected to be, but who you are comfortably because when you know who you are as yourself, then you know what you need to work on.

Then you know what to, you know, you know, what your challenges are. And then you say, okay, this is me, but I still need to work on this. And if I never knew this about myself, like if I didn’t know I was a natural introvert or even what an introvert was for me, that was a huge revelation that I was an introvert.

I used to grow up thinking I’m boring. I’m a loner. No, one’s going to ha talk to me because I’m not interesting. I have nothing to talk about. I have nothing interesting to say. I can’t have conversations. I used to have this stuff going on in my head. Can you imagine going through your entire childhood and teenage years thinking about this, I mean the mental health issues that could come with this kind of thinking, not knowing that it’s perfectly normal to be an introvert.

I wish someone had told me growing up as a teenager, that it’s okay. The way you are, you don’t have to worry about going to the other side, just take your time, grow from it. And when you’re comfortable, you learn being more extroverted. I had to push myself. I was an introvert extrovert. Want to be? I said, no, I want to be an extrovert, but I’m not going to be an extrovert.

I’m always going to be a natural introvert. I can have extroverted tendencies when I practice it. I mean, I am in an extroverted job. I’m doing trainings all the time. I’m in front of a crowd all the time, but I got comfortable doing that because I knew I was an introvert. So there are only good things that can come from this.

People who want to abuse the system will not get the full benefit of an assessment. If they’re looking to, you know, like if they have sneaky ideas or whatever, the reason they’re using it for, but that’s never meant that’s never been the intention for the Myers-Briggs and definitely not for hiring and firing should never use it for that.

Diego: [00:51:55] Yeah. I think that comes greatly for full circle with what you’ve been saying. It’s a tool that helps you enhance your understanding of yourself and others. And this is With a lot of topics. I think when we had Ro-Ann on a few weeks ago on marketing she really explains the broad area of marketing.

And I think this falls into that similar category where most people see it as marketing is just advertising and, you know, MBTI personality tests, it’s about introvert extrovert. So pigeonhole yourself in that direction without understanding the full spectrum, how you can use that to enhance. Cause that’s the point in the end to better ourselves to, you know, improve on one another and add value to whether it be a service or just a regular relationship.

Absolutely. So I’m glad you’re really explain that. Well, that it’s like. Four dimensional are multi-dimensional.

Sheetal: [00:53:05] No, absolutely. The more you, the more you learn about it, the more you’re like, Whoa, I didn’t know this could be possible or that could be possible. And you grow so much, you know, it’s really how it, you have to shift your focus and growth.

You shift your focus towards growth. You’re only going to say, see growth. If people are going to look at it, to try to abuse something or look at it, to abuse the system, that’s what they’re going to try to do. And unfortunately, people have been using the Myers-Briggs for this. And you know, it’s been getting a bad rep because people are abusing the tool.

I mean, a tool is just a tool. You could use it for good reasons. You could use it for bad reasons. You have to choose and always use a practitioner to help you and guide you. If you’re going to go out there and just read a report, it’s not going to tell you anything you need some kind of guidance to help you. What that means.

Diego: [00:53:57] Speaking of practitioners. And I guess I want to shift it more to Libra now because you just, you’re not just a Myers-Briggs practitioner, but you’re also a coach. Six, is it six Sigma, six Sigma management, another tool. And you got all these, I guess, tools in your arsenal to help people and organizations.

So could you talk a bit about how, Oh, you, you know, integrate and combine all these tools and just not just stick to one tool and then we’ll, I guess, shift towards how you transition that into an online. Going from offline to offline.

Sheetal: [00:54:39] Sure. So looking back when I first came back to Suriname, of course I was all about Myers-Briggs then.

Right? Cause I had just become a practitioner. I said, wow, what an amazing tool everybody needs to know about this. And I was trying my level best to just, you know, share this tool with everyone. But at the time Suriname was not ready for this, you know, everyone’s like, what is this? Oh, it’s just another test.

It’s not a test. It’s a tool. You know, you can’t fail or pass cause it’s not a test. So I was struggling to share this information with a lot of people that we’re still getting to know the market, you know, having lived in the us for so many years, which is so fast-paced and so, you know, longer hours and all that.

And then coming back here, you know, things were a little more relaxed and I had people saying things like, Oh, I’m around the corner of your house, but they weren’t at your house w until two hours later. So, you know, getting used to that stuff in Suriname I was like, okay, you know, it was culture shock. Coming back home now being married, you know starting a family, starting a business, running a home all in the same year.

When I think back 10 years ago, I said, Krieshan what were we thinking? We got married. We started a business. We, you know, we bought our home all in the same year that we must have been crazy to have done that all at the same time. And he was already into like the consulting part of the business cause he has an IT background.

So he does a lot of like programming. He creates applications and all, he still does that today. And very quickly he realized, you know what, we need a training aspect in the business. So I lead the trainings and he leads the consulting. So I just dropped everything that I planned on doing with Myers-Briggs and stuff.

I said, okay, what do you know, what is her nominate? What is the need right now? You know, I had to get practical. So I started talking to people and I had coached a lot of students at the time as well. There were a lot of students who want career coaching, and I used to do that at FIU. So I helped a lot of students with, you know, those who are moving abroad and they needed help moving abroad and stuff like that.

In the meantime, exploring the market, our very first workshop, I kid you not. Was a stress management workshop, some the yoga center, I’m sorry, the Indian cultural center that the yoga teacher at the time, since we’re having a yoga day, do you think you guys can do a training on stress management? I said, yes, because I was like, we just need to start with something.

So I said, yeah, we’ll do it. And just then we created a nice program and said, let’s teach people stress management. And it was a hit at the Indian cultural center. And then we made that like a public workshop and we started advertising that and we had a lot of people now getting to know us through stress management.

I was like, okay, I don’t want to be the company who teaches only stress management and not too much after not too long after that a company came to us and said, Hey, do you guys do team buildings? I said, yes, we do team buildings. So we started creating team-building sessions. So it’s not like I didn’t have experience.

I had experienced in the past and very quickly the word went out and more and more companies started coming to us for team buildings. We found ourself practically every weekend, Saturdays, Sundays, even national holidays doing team building sessions. I think we have served thousands of people over the last 10 years, just with team building.

I’m not even counting the other stuff. And in between all of that, we got a request to do customer service trainings. So we started creating those and very, and slowly the services of our company started shaping. We could, because everything that we did was shaped based on what organizations were asking of us.

And really, we only have five things that we serve 10 years, five programs. We don’t do the stress management. We’ve included that in all our programs, we kind of liked it in a snapshot. I think I have to reintroduce that now, especially post COVID and everything, but we did the team buildings over the years, we did the customer service trainings, and we are still being asked still today to do customer service was of course, which has evolved so much over the years.

 I introduced productivity matters three years ago, especially after having children and realizing I have no time anymore. And I have no life I needed to do a lot with very little time. And thanks to my children, productivity matters was created because being a mom of two, running a business, you know, marriage or a home and everything so much to do so little time.

That was created and we’ve been getting a lot of requests for that. Now I’ve in the meantime I became an emotional intelligence practitioner because I was introduced to emotional intelligence through the Myers-Briggs. And while I was in college and stuff, I didn’t realize how much it has helped me over the years in, you know, my marriage in my business and in with my colleagues, like in every, every relationship, especially as a mom, you know, I wasn’t all over the place with my emotions.

I was able to manage myself and still take care of myself and stuff. So I introduced that. So all of these things started to develop over the years. And we’ve really only teach what we use. I would never teach you something that we don’t use ourselves. We don’t do ourselves. We explore it. We go through the programs ourselves with our employees as well.

We tested with a couple of people. We want to make sure it works. It’s stuff that’s really, you know, doing well. People are getting some, the outcomes that they are looking for, and then we get it out there and we let people know, Hey, we’ve done this. So we’re not the company that just rolls out a new program.

Every year. We’ve had five programs that we’ve developed in the last 10 years. And that’s what we’ve been doing over and over again. We have leadership stuff every now and then if I get a request from Myers Briggs, I do that for companies that these five have been our main. And then of course, post COVID, everything changed things.

Jean-luc: [01:01:06] So let’s, let’s jump into that because I think somebody said it here in the comments, Joseph said it, she doesn’t sound like an introvert. Well, you can go into how, how to prepare for these kinds of sessions in a moment. But I think one of the things I really noticed is that, I mean, most of us were struck by, by COVID.

I mean, the dynamics completely shifted you weren’t allowed to be in classrooms or even in you weren’t allowed to do in-house sessions anymore. And. Then you decided to make, make a switch and just say like, okay, we have all this advantage. And it’s funny if I ended just because it’s funny, like for me, myself as well before COVID hit, I try to introduce Asana and Slack and all these project management tools, but everybody was like, yeah, but we’re in the same office.

I mean, why would you use a messaging tool when we’re in the same room together? So it didn’t make any sense. And the same, I kind of went for like online marketing, like online courses. It, nobody, everybody wanted to have the course in a room together and that changed. So maybe you can guide us a little bit through like how you made the switch as well to say like, okay, I’m going to embrace online and we’re make it work to my advantage.

Sheetal: [01:02:23] So I wanted to make the switch. Five years ago, this is pre COVID even. And I’ve been, I’ve been told by my students at FHR. So besides Libra and everything, I was teaching at FHR for five years as a full-time lecturer. So besides running the business and teaching full time, and a lot of my students were telling me, Miss Sujan you really got to put your courses online. Cause you know, these were the, like the young generation who were online all the time. And like, you gotta make videos of you and you gotta put yourself on Instagram. And I was not on social media at the time and I was not active. And I remember always teaching a class in like this agenda.

We can’t find you online. Like you have no social footprint, you need to do something about this. And I’m like, yeah, maybe someday. And then I had been struggling to get on camera and, and Krieshan tried a couple of times he would put a camera in front of me. He’s like, all right, do something, say something.

And I would freeze. I was like, I can’t do this. It’s just not happening. But the moment I would get in a room full of people, you know, I would share knowledge, I would share information, I would get into stuff. And it was just easier now that it started easy because, you know, it took some time to get used to this.

But eventually when I did get used to it, it got easy to teach. So COVID happened. And I was like, perfect. Just what I got used to this. Now we got to switch things around. Definitely our team building stopped because our team buildings are larger groups from like 20 to 200 to 300 people in a group. I last team building.

Was like 250 people. And like, we’re still watching that video. And like, I wonder if we’re ever going to do this again. So I really had to like now break those walls and say, all right, if I need to keep doing what I’m doing, it has to go on video or else. I’m never going to be able to share and serve and provide value as I haven’t.

I have over the years. And the thing is, I love what I do. I really love to teach. And it was really my calling. I just didn’t know it was until much later I will not be able to give value if I can’t do what I do. So I had to get on camera and the first few tries were a disaster. I would get nervous. I would get sweaty where Krieshan had to be.

So patient in behind the camera trying to film me and, you know, encourage me and motivate me. Like I can’t do it. I can’t do it. Don’t make me do this. Why did this have to happen? You know? And I was getting like, all. Eventually we made video after video, after video, and it got easier. So I made my first draft of emotions matter, which is our basic course on emotional intelligence.

And I absolutely hated it. I said, we’re not putting this online. And then I made the second one. I did the whole thing over again, and it was much better. There was a better flow and I felt comfortable. I was okay. Looking at myself on camera because you know, we, women are always checking our hair and everything like that as like, yeah, I had to get over all of those barriers.

So we put the video out and we had over 500 people sign up for that within the first month, it was crazy. I was like, Whoa. So I guess people are open for this. I did not expect that. And there were really great evaluations and a lot of people got value from just going through the basics. And that really motivated me.

To create the paid version of the program. So now I went from making five videos. So this was five videos in one course, which is under 60 minutes, you could do it under 60 minutes. For those of you who still want to do it, we still have it. It’s still out there. I decided to do the premium version, which was almost 50 videos, five hours, a five-hour programs.

If you combine all the videos, it’s at least five hours. It took me six months to record all those videos, record edit and all that stuff. Of course, we learned how to edit. We learned how to film them, you know, try and trial and error, which kind of lighting, what kind of angle? Where should you stand? All of this was new to us.

We knew nothing about video and editing and stuff. So he and I in lockdown with her children in our home had to put in a lot of work to learn how to do that. Of course, we have a consulting side of our business. So someday when you interview Krieshan he can tell you all about that, his side of the story.

I think you should do that, right? What’s his side of the story. The consulting part of our business, what’s going on. Cause that’s, that’s always online, but the training part we really have to work on and I had to really work on myself. So I’m like this closed right to finishing the last videos. And I go back and I see we, we made some mistakes, we made some errors, there were some things that went wrong and we could not put them up.

I was freaking out. I’m like, I’m never going to make this happen. And then come September. I had to really like gather my strength again. And I said, I’m doing the whole damn thing over again. I don’t care. I’m just going to do it over again. So within a span of four weeks, First, it was six months within a span of four weeks.

I did the second round, which by the way I released in December, that was my first group. I relaunched it again in January. In the first group I had one person sign up. It was embarrassing. I was like, Oh my goodness, no, one’s going to sign up for this. And it’s fine. But by the second group, I had a lot of people who were interested who were into it, who signed up and I have a group graduating in April.

From this program and I’m so excited. I’m so thrilled. There have been so many transformations from the emotional intelligence program. I call it reset, recharge, reinvent your life because that’s what it was for me. And it was really everything that I had been through emotionally, helping others break those barriers, emotionally, reinvent themselves, find themselves again, bring back all the things that they love, enjoy that they wanted to grow from and brought that in that entire program.

And I’m going to be starting my next group in may. So I’m going to be promoting that again for my May group. And I’ll be doing that two or three times a year. So how this works is that. People watch the prerecorded videos per module. There are like four modules. And then I coach them on a weekly basis as well.

So I meet them online and say, Hey, how did the week go? What did you learn? What were the things that happen? And, you know, what were the things that you, you know, what were those revelations you had this week? And I answered questions and I came live and really coached and supported online email WhatsApp in Facebook group, all the possible social media channels possible.

And I was not a social media person. So introverts, you can do this. You can make this happen. If I can do this, anyone can do this. I think it’s,

Jean-luc: [01:09:40] I think it’s so important that you mentioned about the, the first, so, so you have to imagine that you worked on it for six months, plus four weeks,

Diego: [01:09:52] six months, four weeks. And I’m really. Glad you share that as well. Like usually people think, Oh, it’s so professionally done and they expect, cause they don’t see the back end. They don’t see the results. So you sharing that, you had like one sign up for the first batch. It’s really, I think eye opening to people and to us as well.

And it shows that keeping up with it and you know, just going for it, having that grit and persistence. Eventually people start adapting to the situation and seeing the value in it. And once the ball starts rolling, you, you get an avalanche. Absolutely.

Sheetal: [01:10:45] And you know, guys, I was this close to quitting because when that first set of videos that I tried so hard to record did not work out.

I was like, no, this is not going to happen. But if there’s something I’ve learned about emotional intelligence is overcoming my setbacks and thank God for emotional intelligence. It’s everything that I’ve ever learned really became alive in this experience for me, every single setback. And trust me, I had a ton of setbacks from the video editing and not knowing what to do.

And then we had issues with this and there was a technology. Then my video was so perfect and the sound was horrible and I had to redo the whole thing. So we had so many issues and I was like, Oh my goodness. Am I ever going to finish this. But it made it happen. We just tried again and again and again, and in trying again and again, you just get better and you get faster, it gets easier.

And then you’re like, Hey, it’s not as hard. And if you ask me now, if I’m going to do this again, Hey, I’m already rolling in my next course to start that. And now I have so much more knowledge I have now, these cool effects that I could put in the next one that I’m so excited about. And you learn so many new things because of this.

So yes, you will feel, go ahead and fail. Go. I even cried about it. I’m not ashamed to share out this because I like to be real. This is what happens behind the scene. An entrepreneur job is a 24 seven job. It’s not a nine to five job. It’s, you’re constantly busy. You’re going, going, going, going, and you keep going till you find the solution and you make it happen.

And yes, it helps to have an amazing partner who is beside you, who will be with you, who supports you? This is why I have Krieshan and sometimes I frustrate him and drive him crazy. But, you know, I know he loves me, so he’s always supporting me and you just make it happen. And yes, after that first sign up, I was ready to quit then doing it’s like, well, Maybe no, one’s interested in emotional intelligence because I got a lot of, well, what’s that?

What does this mean? What’s it going to do for me? So I was like, all right, breathe. Here we go again. But then eventually I started doing free master classes and that’s when I got the idea. Let me give people some free information about this. Let me put in the free courses. Let me get myself out there and just talk about it.

Talk about it, talk about it. And that’s when people started listening, that’s when people started noticing, and then I had a bunch of sign-ups and people signed up and I’m having all these amazing testimonials. People are like, wow, I didn’t even know what these words meant, but I was so skeptical. We didn’t want to do this, but we thought, why not?

Let’s try something new. And I am sure I have amazing students who are like, Oh, we’re telling everybody about this. And that’s how it starts out. And I know that I don’t have to struggle as much to get my students for the next group, because I have these people who’ve gone through the process. Who’ve loved it.

Whose lives have changed. They’re going to tell the others, you want your life changing. I’m not advertising.

As an entrepreneur, you’ve got to reinvent yourself. You can’t just stand still and say, well, what now? You just find ways to make it happen and make it happen. But, you know, we, we did a lot of courses on zoom, by the way, thank God for some organizations who were open to doing our productivity sessions, even customer service and things like that via zoom.

I said, listen, if you guys are open to it, we’ll do it. And all year I kid you not all year 2020, we were doing all our training programs on zoom. You know, some were saying, Oh, we’ll wait, we’ll see you when things open up. And as soon as things open up for like two weeks, you know, we did a training like really quickly, and then things went on, lock down again.

So it was like a lot of like change of schedules and stuff, you know? I mean, we’re flexible. We can make it work and that’s what’s happening now as well. Right. And we have some companies who are like, Oh, we can get 10 people in that room. Do you think, you know, we could just do at least 10 people as we’ll do it.

And some are like, you know, we’re okay to do it online. So yeah. So now we’re online masterclasses rolling. Next week I have one on small business. So a whole new world has opened up and if you’re not online, get out there really, you know, it’s scary at first, but you’ll get used to it.

Diego: [01:15:18] Two things I quickly want to mention.

And I think you partially answered this question already, but first. You called out Krieshan and yours is yes. Yes. We should do an interview with appreciate. So Krieshan if you’re still watching listening this is a public invitation to you Krieshan and secondly Joseph asked, what did you do to get more people for a second time? And I think you briefly mentioned this. You started to doing the free master classes. Yeah. So

Sheetal: [01:15:50] the, the master classes really helped. I didn’t do that the first time because that idea didn’t come to me and that’s the thing.

Right? You learn as you keep doing it. And I got the idea to do free webinars and masterclasses to introduce the topic. So what I did was I pulled one video from my program and it kind of expanded on that one topic. And a lot of people loved it and it was called positive goal setting with emotional intelligence.

How do you set your goals positively using emotional intelligence? So introduce the concept of emotional intelligence people understood what it was. And eventually we went into positive goal setting. I had like a free handbook you know, a lot of free information that people could go. So even if you didn’t sign up for the course, you still got a lot of value.

And it’s something that I’ve, I’ve learned from all the other experts that are out there. Cause they, this is what they do. Right. So, so I said, okay, let me try this. And that’s exactly how people got more interested. In fact, I’m getting a lot of requests for the meat free masterclasses. Okay. What are you doing that again?

And so I decided to do more of that, pull out just one topic, share information. People are always going to get some value. People always appreciate the free value and they will always remember you for it. And then eventually you will have people signing up and say, Hey and the best part is. They can see what you are, stylists.

They can connect with you, then they can decide for themselves if they want to listen to you for 50, you know, for like five hours who I want to spend money on this person for myself, well, they’re spending money on themselves, but do I want to listen to this person? It’s my way of giving them a chance to get to know me as well as a trainer.

I mean, you don’t have to love me. Not everyone loves me. Not everyone hates me, but it’s your way to connect with me. And once you’ve connected with me and you feel like, Hey, I could learn from her. That’s when you’re going to pay for it. You’re not to just. You know, some people may blind me pay for some things, but I believe in a connection.

And if we have a connection, you’re, I don’t have to convince you to purchase my courses. And that’s the purpose behind these masterclasses. And I always like to give value. I got so encouraged to go on video. I’m doing these Tuesday tips now. So every Tuesday I have a video on our Libra page, even on my page and my LinkedIn and stuff, where I share a tip on productivity, on emotional intelligence, on customer service, on team building, because those are the services we have.

So I’m linking them to our services. And every Tuesday there is a video released where I’m sharing the tip. So this is me just putting myself out there and, you know, getting used to the whole idea going on video.

Jean-luc: [01:18:41] Yeah, and, and being awesome guests on this on this podcast helps a little bit as well.

Joseph and Joseph, I need to do this. Yes, Joseph, you definitely need to do is, you know, how it works. So just go there and do it correctly. Wants to say he’s a campaigner who is, I think you and I are about the same, actually the same MBTI type recall went in and meet him. He was at the way she to meet him curious.

So he did the test, any the ESTP and there’s also a T at the end, which is new for me, by the way, because that’s something that was added, but a question that I really wanted to ask connecting to still, to, MBTI going a little bit back there’s a lot of nature versus nurture the debates going on. And I’m wondering at what in each is it okay for somebody to take the MBTI because I can imagine if you start off with this a little young, you can get really obsessed with this. Of course. So is there also an, an an age limit?

Sheetal: [01:19:47] So in my training, I was taught that it’s a good idea for teenagers. And when I say teenagers, you have to be at least the age of 15 to 18 to get started because Myers-Briggs offers career reports as well.

Now, just to put this out there, the kind of reports you get from the original Myers-Briggs, which is what I’m a practitioner for, it gives you a very different report. It’s very detailed. It’s very thorough again. What you get for free. It’s just limited information. What you get from a practitioner is much more.

So we used to give out these career reports and it’s good for teenagers to find out where they are, who they are, where they want to be there at that stage, where they’re still nurturing their personality. They’re still getting to know themselves. And honestly, sometimes just really confused. So a lot of the times teenagers may or may not be able to answer.

Some of them are spot on. They know themselves really well. Some of them are still confused. That’s okay. I always tell people it’s okay to be confused because if you’re not confused, you’re never going to know who you’re going to be. And it’s good to be confused because you’ll make mistakes and we grow from mistakes.

We don’t grow from success. By the way we grow from making our mistakes. Success is easy. It’s the mistakes that help us grow. And when you grow from those mistakes, you’ll know. Oh, okay. So I know now that I’m not good at this, let me explore what else I could be good at. So find out everything you’re not good at find out everything that you’re not capable of doing, because that will help you rise above to become capable and finding out what you can do.

So start to put that aside. So if you don’t know what you want to do, you’ll know what you don’t want to do. I always tell people this and you rather find that out earlier than later. So it’s a good idea for teenagers to do it. Absolutely.

Jean-luc: [01:21:51] So many nuggets, Diego.

There are so many, so many good pieces of content in this in this episode.

Diego: [01:21:59] So I actually kind of got a few years ago. I went a bit ham with it. So I sent the one I did at least just, just to get a feel for, you know, my circles, my friends. So I sent it to, I think, 20, 30 people. And fortunately they send the results to me. So I put this in an Excel sheet. I charted it out to see like what the majority was my, I guess, circles and where I fall.

So surprisingly the biggest group was in the. I guess the range that Jean-luc is in the ENFP so it’s kind of really close on know websites. It’s a green one. I lost the name, but it was really four in particular that were like 60 to 70% of my circles. So I’m curious, does this have to do anything with I guess the type of people that are attracted to you, or is it more like some are in a higher percentage than others? And that’s how they, I guess, get grouped together and kind of relate or resonate more with you.

Sheetal: [01:23:22] I, you know, when, if I have to talk about my circle of friends, I had all the types, there was not one dominating more than the others. The one I think back, I definitely had a lot of extroverted friends. I also had introverted friends and I’m grateful for that because we get value from all of them.

And, and the thing is, if, even if you are a certain type and you have another friend that has the same letters or the same type. You’re not going to be the same. There’s still going to be dimensions of your personality that are going to be different because remember my Myers Briggsdoes not measure everything.

Okay. If you’re both introverts, your introverted side may be stronger than the other person. Maybe they have developed their extroverted side a bit more than you have, and that’s what makes it different. And that’s why those percentages help as well. So those percentages kind of tell us, well, you seem to be leaning more on this side versus this side.

I remember we’re always changing. So our Myers-Briggs is supposed to be the same over the years in the sense that if we, if we record ourselves in our natural preferences, it will always be the same. It doesn’t change. What will change is what we’ve developed. So if you see a change in the letter, it’s maybe because you develop the other side and you, now you think, Oh, I’m, I’m more extroverted, but you’re not an extrovert.

You’re just always going to be a natural introvert that that’s always going to feel like home. The extroverted side will always be feeling like the vacation or the party that you went to. So it’s, I like to give this, this, this example, right? And the women will relate to this. Like when we are in our most comfortable shoes, especially those running shoes, the ones that we can stand on all day, we can do anything with climb up the stairs, whatever.

That’s our MBTI type. That’s where we feel most comfortable. We feel ourselves met. I could stand on the shoes all day, all day. But, you know, every once in a while, we’d like to take out those stilettos and we like to take out those fancy shoes and we like to wear them. But if you wear them too long, what happens?

It starts to hurt. It gets uncomfortable after a little while you want to take it off because it’s not comfortable anymore. It was nice the first two hours, but two hours of that, you’ve had enough. It’s like, when can I just take this off and fi get back into those comfortable shoes. That’s what it comes down to.

But eventually those shoes, when you wear it long enough, they start to loosen up. They start to kind of like get comfortable when you wear it longer. And then that’s what I hope that makes it easier to understand how this works.

Jean-luc: [01:26:15] So I’m gonna pick a comment from half an hour ago when Gregory asked us, I hope you guys consider extending the interview for another 30 minutes.

We secretly did that, but we also have to respect time. And that means Gregory. We’re going to use another question of yours as the final question for, for today’s episode. So short question by Gregory are actually still pretty long. One. Do you perhaps have an opinion on the big five personality test? I did the test and. It was life-changing. So he would like to know if there’s something similar or not.

Sheetal: [01:26:57] I’m honestly not able to answer that question because I’m not familiar with it. I have been trained with many different assessments. One of them is being the strong interest inventory, which is an interest test and I’ll talk about that another day.

I am much more familiar with the Myers-Briggs and lately I’ve been doing more emotional intelligence and things like that. Ultimately, the Myers Briggs is an emotional intelligence tool because it’s a self-awareness tool. And one of the foundations of emotional intelligence. Is self-awareness the more self-aware you are the better you’re able to manage your emotions.

The better you’re able to manage yourself as well as others. And this is why I relate so much to the Myers Briggs, because I have not only become a practitioner, I’ve used it so much in my life. I don’t think I have diverted so much into anything else. I’ve taken other assessments, but it has not attracted me as much as it has with the Myers-Briggs.

So I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that question.

Diego: [01:28:01] No worries. And I think it’s great that you just said that straight up because you know, you are an MBTI practitioner and I guess to substitute that last question I have an interesting one here and for some context You briefly mentioned, you know gender in your last explanation that women understand this.

And that triggered a question that I had to ask from the beginning, actually. So some context I’m in a mastermind group with podcasters and this past week a topic came on that women in particular either cancel more often than men or reschedule, or just don’t say yes, as often as men to come on these types of thought platforms.

So in your, I guess, what could you speculate or maybe use from the knowledge you have on personnel? Personalities would be the reason behind that.

Sheetal: [01:29:08] Okay. I have a question before I answer that, did a man ask that, Oh man, say that, or a woman said that. So

Diego: [01:29:15] here’s the thing. This comment came from a woman who only interviews women.

Okay. And she got a lot of cancellations. So she just brought a topic in, then a man in my mastermind group, who is in the science, said he noticed the same thing. He does men and women, both, but he tries to balance the guests 50 50, who in he invites the ratio for women that he actually gets on is like in the single digit percentages.

So, and even we had we were in a fireside chat with Tyler Cowen. He’s a famous economist, very popular. And he gave us the same observation that he really finds it, unfortunate that less women come to this platform or say yes, because he experienced the same. Although his favorite episodes are with women

Sheetal: [01:30:11] there are multiple reasons.

But I am curious, did they give the reasons why women were canceling? Because I, I could, I could count a number of reasons this could happen.

Diego: [01:30:23] That’s the whole mystery trying to unravel it.

Sheetal: [01:30:29] Well, why don’t we keep that a mystery?

Jean-luc: [01:30:36] Yeah, I do want to say, I do want to see, we haven’t had any cancellations from women reschedules or anything. So I do want to be clear that for Social Confoes this, this story doesn’t hold up, but it’s just an observation that Diego came across.

Sheetal: [01:30:56] I think it’s interesting because from my own experience, at least, I mean, I’ve done other podcasts as well.

I don’t think I’ve ever canceled. The only reason I would cancel is because of an emergency. And also because I have two children and usually, you know, I will be like, okay, if my kids need me right now, I’m absolutely canceling, you know, but that would be maybe the only reason it’s never happened. And, you know, I have an amazing partner who knows that if I need to be on a podcast or I need to be in a recording, I need to be doing something.

We have this agreement, you know, he will take care of the kids while I do this. And when he needs to do his thing, I with the kids. So we have this, that we both get to do what we need to do, what their reasons could be, could be many different things. And you also have to realize that, you know, women are now putting themselves out there and that’s now, and I think the last 10 years and.

There are a lot of women, introverts and women introverts are still struggling to put themselves out there. So there could be many things. It could be that they’re introverts. It could be that they have other responsibilities, children being their priority. And for those who have children know this, if your children need you, your full counsel, everything else, no matter what, but men canceled too.

I know that. And if they may not be seeing the women, men cancellation. I think they have to dig a little deeper. I don’t think we can say that women cancel more than than men, but I don’t think that’s fair to the women. But I think that they need to explore that further before they start generalizing that women tend to cancel this more than women.

I think men, men can as well, men also have responsibilities. They will also be thinking about their children and things like that. And, and I don’t think we need to general generalize the men, women things, and kind of just see it for what it is and just explore it further. And you know, I’ve never, I’ve from what I’ve heard from other podcasters, this is the first time I’m actually hearing something like this.

So it’s actually interesting, but I wouldn’t look into it so much, you know, I would be like, you know what go with the flow, focus on what matters, focus on your guests, man, or woman, and just make the most of it.

Jean-luc: [01:33:25] We’ll definitely make the most out of this interview. Thank you for being here quickly before we close off.

How can people find you? How can people connect with you?

Sheetal: [01:33:39] All right. I can be found on Instagram. I can be found on LinkedIn on Facebook and I can be found on Twitter. Just make sure you find the right Sheetal Sujan, because apparently there are a couple of more, and Diego was looking for me on Twitter.

I’m not very active on Twitter. I promise I’m going to do better, but I’m definitely much more active on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. I like to post every now and then. I’m not a daily poster, but I do post a lot of inspirational stuff. You can find me on the Libra websites as well. Libra page, not hard to find.

So I’m easy to find. Just look for Libra. Look for Sheetal Sujan you’ll find me more and more clubhouse block clubhouse. I’m a listener on clubhouse. I enjoy my clubhouse moments. I have done a couple of rooms as well. It’s exhausting sometimes because they could go on for hours. I mean, I’d be like, all right, I got 60 minutes and I’m going to talk about that.

So we’re not going to have a five hour, six hour overnight room. So yeah. Clubhouse has been a lot of learning moments, so yeah, you can find me there as well every now and then I do a room there as well.

Diego: [01:34:55] Thank you very much. Sheetal this has been amazing guys connect with her. Definitely a lot of value to be, to be had.

And I guess with that being said, this episode, if you guys miss have friends who missed it, definitely recommend it will be released Saturday, so you can rewatch relisten on Saturday, send it to your friends. Leave us some comments, what you guys thought. And we will try to get back to that as much as possible with that being said, Jean-luc

Jean-luc: [01:35:28] yes, we roll out with two very nice comments, Joseph saying, thank you for the value guys. And another one guys. Amazing episode. Thanks. This was all of course. Thanks to our guests.Sheetal one more time last time. Thank you for much for being here. Yes, people are. Thank you for watching. This was Social Confoes. We see you and that we’ll see you next Tuesday at nine o’clock Surinamese time.