Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Character. Show all posts

Tuesday 11 August 2020

Misconception about empathy and performance

 Misconception about empathy and performance

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)



One of the responses for last week's discussion on "empathy or looking at the things from other's views" is that if we start looking at things from other's views, that leads into lenience and, in turn, mediocrity in the performance, particularly in a professional environment.

We need to understand the slight difference between empathy and being lenient.

Empathy means we listen to other's views and recognize the cause in it. That does not mean that we are accepting the consequences as such.

For example, let us imagine a typical scenario in the workplace,

One of your junior colleagues on a particular day left the office early due to personal issues. He/she may be the authorized person for a financial transaction, and he/ she had not delegated the task to anyone on that day. Due to his/ her absence, the important financial transaction did not happen, which affected your organizational performance.

In this scenario, as a manager/leader, what choices you had the next day when the junior colleague reported the duty?

Choice 1:

You might have displayed your dissatisfaction with the performance without listening to his/ her situation. In this process, both of you experienced negative emotions or hurt personally.No learning from low performance.
 
Choice 2 :

You might have listened to personal issues, and both of you felt sorry about the performance. In this process, you are lenient and accept mediocre performance.
 
Choice 3:

You might have listened to personal issues, acknowledged it and you might have assertively conveyed your dissatisfaction and his/ her lack of delegation to the work. You made him/ her responsible for not completing the task.He/she might have learned from the mistakes.
 
Choice 3 is the appropriate method of understanding others and ensuring the right management process in place.

Most of the time, we are witnessing either choice 1 or 2 in which mediocre performance is encouraged.

 i recall an incident that happened to me some years back. I drove my car first time in a new city and violated the signal as I was not familiar with the signal points and free left etc. A traffic policeman stopped me and got my license. I briefed him about my first-time driving and lack of awareness about the signal points. He listened to me and advised me to be careful in city driving. But he was firm to charge me fine as punishment and I also paid. In my view, the policemen were very empathic about my ignorance but, at the same time, firm on his duty. That is what required for the people who are at the commanding level as a manager or leader. Just imagine if the policeman displayed choice 1 or choice 2  behavior, then we both were not doing justice to ourselves as humanity consideration or duty consciousness.!
 

The point is being empathetic does not lead to lenience; you need to be firm on your role as a leader in a professional environment for ensuring performance!

Wednesday 5 February 2020

How does the environment affect you?

How does the environment affect you?


A few days back, i met a friend after a long time. During the interaction, he was frequently mentioning his colleagues' and subordinate’s toxic behaviors and his frustration to work with them. As I knew him as a highly energetic and positive person, but now he becomes more skeptical about any new initiatives and cynical about everything in his workplace and quality of life. He was much disturbed due to his colleagues/subordinates as they are the people with whom he spends much time.

It is said that you are the AVERAGE of the five people you spend most of the time.  This statement may be true because your environment influences your thought processes, behaviors, and activities. The environment can be family, professional, or friend ‘s circle.

 When you surround yourself with positive and energetic people, you will also start to observe them, reflect their thought process and behavior in you without much conscious effort. Alternatively, if you are surrounded by mostly with toxic people who are always blaming/complaining about everything, you will also start believing in their thought process, and you will also demonstrate the same behavior. That is the power of the environment and its influence in our life.

       As you cannot change the environment completely, be aware of the quality of people you are surrounded by, the news channel you are watching, your Facebook / WhatsApp feeds, and so on. Make a slight shift in the environmental mix by meeting new people, joining educational forums, visiting new places, getting exposed to new challenges, and associating with people beyond your natural circle. This shift will help you to enhance your perspectives.

       Since the environment influences your action, be aware of the quality of your situation, and choose the balanced mix.

P.S: (I suggested my friend look up other functional colleagues, benchmark his boss, and start spending more time with different circles to alter his environment mix. I hope things will become better soon!)

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Why do we respect some people most?

We do come across many people in our lives as friends, colleagues, teacher, mentor, boss, and relatives. Generally, we like all of them. However, we respect a few people with high regard. (Scan through your phone contacts list, you may easily count a few as highly respected people).Irrespective of age, positional or materialistic status, why do we respect some people most from the rest of the network?

The reason could be on two broad factors.
1. Their professional competency – technical/managerial knowledge and skill
2. Their character –friendliness, helping tendency, boldness or any other admiring qualities


Using the above factors, they might be consistently inspired others through their professional contribution or helped others towards growth or the way they came up in life. Because of their inspired action, we respect them highly. In fact, the respect is not given to them; they earned it from us through their consistent competency and character-building efforts.
 

Likewise, if you want to be regarded as a highly respected person in your life, you 
have to work on consistent character and competency building. Earning true respect is a long-term process.

Each one of us has rights and be deserved to be respected. Only, you need to commit to consistent capability and character building!
 

Wednesday 7 June 2017

Why do we trust some people as leader?


In a professional environment, we come across a lot of people either as colleagues, subordinates, boss.Only a few people, we admire as a leader and have trust.With this belief, we sometimes even adopt them as our role model, mentor, guide, coach, and well-wisher.

What makes difference between others and leaders? Only two factors make us believe that they are our leader. One is CHARACTER and second is COMPETENCY.

The character could be boldness, firmness, approachable, attitude towards helping others and so on as we see as the positive soft factors.
Competency could be their functional and managerial skills like technical mastery, problem-solving skill, decision making, thought process and communication capabilities as we see as positive hard factors.

When either character or competence lacks with reference to their position, we start to disregard them as leaders and lose trust. Now, relate this to any personalities from your professional, media, politics or in sports background and you find that those who trusted as leader once upon a time lost their shine when they missed character or competency in line with their positional status!!!

The point is, in professional or business environment, if you like to scale up your career from individual performer to leader/role model, you need to continuously enhance your character and competency.This character and competency building is a lifelong effort as any professional growth demands.

Friday 17 June 2016

Why should I develop my team?

In one of my recent management seminars to senior leadership team, one participant asked the following question, which I think, is powerful and thought provoking.

 He questioned, “Why should I develop my  team  by teaching all my  years of learnings and spending    time to guide them? If I equip them, will not be a threat to my position?”.

My response to this is as follows

1.Assume that you are not developing your  team and not preparing any  successor for you. When management  considers you for elevation or  different growth  opportunities, they think twice about existing  positions as there is no right successor. Management  may want to keep you in the same position till they find an alternative. Who will be the loser?

2.Assume that if you are not  developing your team, you will continue to do the same job forever and how will you equip yourself for new learning’s and new growth?

3.In today’s scenario, real talent will find its own way. If you are  not  taking care of your people development and growth, eventually  your smart team member  find his own way to grow  either in your existing organization or in the new organization. You will be just witnessing their growth.

4.By law of nature, you will grow only by helping others to grow. In the short term,  you may feel, you are not getting what you deserve, but in the long term, your growth depends on  winning mindset, accepting the change, helping others, seeing the big opportunities in the world!!.

Hence, in all dimensions, as a leader of your team, you should develop your team.

Would like to hear your perspective on this question!!

Thursday 9 June 2016

Dealing with setbacks

       In business or professional environment or in sports, when something goes wrong, the most affected person will be those who are headed the business or organization or function or team . Simply, the captain of the team. The challenge for the captain is to bring back the confidence of all stakeholders through quick actions and more than that managing self emotionally to overcome the setback.
       When we go through the successful peoples life stories, some common patterns emerge in their thought process and approach in dealing with setbacks

1.They use to feel gifted to lead a team either as captain or as owner of the business. They see the position as a responsibility. They internally feel and believe that if they are blessed with such privilege, they will also be blessed with to overcome any setback. It is more about taking the setback as  part of the divine play to make him strong

2.They strongly believe that failures are acceptable. This reflection protects them from self –sabotaging and think a way forward 

3.They deeply spend time with themselves to introspect the causes and mistakes they did. They  critically evaluate the assumptions, decision making process, management style  behaviors etc.  

4.They are quick to come out with an alternate plan and put into action

5.Single minded focus on execution till seeing the result 


It is not a problem falling down. How quickly we bounce back and strong reveal our true inherent strength.

Wednesday 4 May 2016

Change @ Individual level

An interesting poem whose author is unknown, but thanks to his profound thought process

“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world, 
I found difficult to change the world, so I tried to change the nation
When I found, I could not change the nation, I began to focus on my town
I could not change the town, and as an older man, I tried to change my family 
I could not change my family, as an old man, I realized, I can change myself
And suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself,
I could have made an impact on  my family,
My family and I could have made an impact on our town,
My town impact could have changed the nation and in turn, the world”

This reflects our attitude towards change either in organizational or  in a family environment.We assume that the change has to happen first at organizational level or higher positional level  and feel that as individuals we do  not have much influence or control. Instead the change  can be initiated at individual level  or functional level, which will trigger changes at the organizational level.

For example, you could have noticed that one person with the good thought process, intention may change the quality of discussion or perspectives in meetings. He changed his thought process first and could able to trigger to the entire gathering. 

Small, continuous change in our practices at the individual level or functional level  will have a ripple effect on the organization’s culture. Others can able to realize the change and always you can be the influence of change wherever you are! .

Sunday 3 April 2016

Infinite Vision (Book)

The inspiring book is all about the explaining the path of How Aravind Eye Care Hospital became the world’s greatest business case for compassion.

Authors: Pavithra K Mehta / Suchitra Shenoy

Context:

Dr.Govindappa Venkataswamy founded Aravind eye clinic with 11 beds  in 1976 after his retirement  in his hometown  in South India  .He had only one vision “To give sight for all” who has curable blind diseases with highest quality and affordable cost .Today Aravind eye care had treated more than 32 million patients and performed more than 4 million surgeries . In India, 5 % of the eye surgeries are being done by Aravind. 

Today Aravind eye care case study is mandatory reading for every MBA student at Harvard business school.

Started in a small way by a visionary person become the world greatest business case for compassion.

Excerpts from the book:

Aravind surgeons average 2000 cataract surgeries a year, against the Indian average of 400 surgeries and the US average of under 200.The efficiencies that enable to provide the lowest cost, highest quality eye care systems in the world.----

This is a model that demonstrates the power of integrating innovation with empathy, business principles with service and outer transformation with inner change. -----

To understand the Aravind model –one must look into the heart and the mind of the visionary surgeon who set it all into motion. ----

Recommend this book who would like to understand the power of vision and the leader’s compassion towards the humanity.It is inspiring to learn the process of how one person from the village made it happen in a span of 30 + years.

Also for manufacturing professionals, it is inspiring to learn how  they applied LEAN SYSTEM THINKING in their process to improve the efficiency  and made it  best cost in the world.

Overall, Inspiring book from an Indian background.

Tuesday 22 March 2016

Dignity (Real Incident)

Recently ,I  was  waiting in Bangalore railway station to return to Chennai  and the time was around  10.30 pm .A young  boy was selling tea and he approached me to sell  it to me . As I did not have the appetite to have tea during that late hour and  politely refused.But, he  started requesting me to buy a cup. On looking his appearance and  his effort on persuading, I just started conversing with him.

In less than a minute , I gathered information  that  he was  studying  8th standard in nearby Government  school and his ambition was to become a  police officer  in life. During the chatting, he was insisting me to buy a cup of tea .As I wanted  to help him in a small way ( also I wasted his business time !!) ,I gave Rs 10 to him and said not inclined to  buy tea .He refused to accept  the offer  and said “please buy a cup of tea and offer me money  as charge for it".

I was touched by his dignity, bought the tea and paid Rs 10. He returned   the change Rs 2 to me and I told him  to keep that with him. This time , he is very firm, smiley  and politely replied , “I earn my money through my service , not  by other means” and  lifted his tea carrier and moved from that place.

I stunned  with his dignity,  attitude , clarity of thoughts , firmness at this young age.

After this incident, the  following questions  were lingering in the mind  

1.Who had taught him “receiving anything with dignity  and not accept anything free”. ?
2.Where did he learn the persuasion skill  to sell his product to strangers?
3.What kind of determination, he has about his aspiration despite the current  family situation?
4.Is it not a “Divine GIFT” in living with dignity, positive approach about life  despite all the temporary shortcomings?


Pl write your comments 

Thursday 17 March 2016

Iceberg Principle

      One of the management principles used for problem solving approach in organizational environment is iceberg principle .The same principle can be applied for personal excellence.

      The iceberg principle* says that the majority of our efforts are invisible to the eye just as the majority of the ice mass of an iceberg is underwater, so is the majority of the hard work it takes to deliver good results in any endeavor.
As most of us aware, that before Edison invented the concept of light bulb, there were various versions of the light bulb, but without practical, affordable, durable and inexpensive for home illumination. Edison experimented with six thousands materials and finally succeeded. The inventor knew that his invention was going to change the lifestyle and this drove his relentless experimentation. He did not care how much experimentation, he should conduct. He kept on going until he had an inexpensive, long lasting electrical bulb. What external world knows only the outcome, not much aware of the hard work gone into that.This is iceberg principle.


       How do we make it useful to our lives? It is good way to remind ourselves that the most accomplishment happens in life after series of hard work and effort.We need to show up every day with our best effort and this small shift in mindset make a big difference in our lives.Even sometimes our work does not produce immediate results,we need not get disappointed.It is better to keep working towards the purpose or goal than to give room for inner doubts, rejections, and disappointments. Historically that is how great accomplishment done and great people demonstrated..!.

* source courtesy : The Excellence Habit ..Vlad Zachary

Monday 14 December 2015

Adversity

“Every adversity, every failure carries with it the seeds of an equal or greater benefits”-Napoleon Hill

         Adversity or difficult times happen in our life at any moment. The difficult moments can be losing job suddenly, losing dear ones, losing all earned money etc. Those moments make our life upside down and literally we may not have clue what would happen next. As it is beyond our control, we can not avoid and only option is to undergo the experience.

          Actually, those tough times only teach us a lot of valuable lesson about life. It brings loved one closer to us than ever before. It brings us a lot of time to introspect our past mistakes, which leads to difficult times. It makes us to think to handle the future different way .It brings out our real divine power within us and rise up as stronger than ever.


           Let us look back your life; you might have come across so many difficult times in different point of time. Despite all those ,today you are .This is due to the powerful learning’s , courage, will power, divine energy you got from those tough times. Similarly, you look around any nation, which had undergone many tough times in the past and today it stands tall because adversity makes them stronger than before.

          Hence, adversity need to be looked at as part of life, that also will pass over a period of time .Real happiness is not in good times and it is on how we manage tough times and come up .Great time ahead after every adversity. That is the Law of Nature!


Wednesday 15 July 2015

Invest in yourself

“Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make.It will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.”—Robin Sharma

          At one time a bird asked a BEE, “After a continuous hard work, you develop the honey, but a man steals the honey… Do you not feel sorry about that? . Then the Bee replied, “Never.. because a man can only steal my honey, NOT  the art of making honey..

         Sometime in professional life, your work may not get the timely recognition  or somebody may claim credit for your work. In business association, someone may exploit you  and your ideas without rewarding you. Those are the moments are only temporary and short term in nature. The surroundings or others  can only temporarily halt your progress. No one permanently stops your growth. In the long term, your unique talent will become discovered and acknowledged.


         Keep investing on your skill and talent development. Keep investing your time on managing yourself, ethics, purpose, character, motivation and conduct. You will attract good things in life!