Resilience and quality of network

 Resilience and quality of network 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Recently read an interesting research article, and the insight may be helpful to you. Some people easily overcome any setbacks in life, and some struggle to overcome them, reflecting their resilience power. Resilience is nothing but the ability to bounce back from challenging situations emotionally and physically.

Most of us may be thinking that resilience is something inherent quality within us. However, the research article indicates that people with high resilience power have a good network of people or forums to develop their resilience.

For example, if you have a network of good friends or like-minded people in your professions and whenever you face challenging situations, you may interact with them and get different ideas/views to overcome the problem. That kind of association enables one to look at the situations from a different perspective than those who do not build that network.

The key learning is how we develop our network with worthy or reliable people, which may help us develop the capability to overcome any challenging situations.

When i was reflecting on this key insight,i realized that some of my friends, when they had a challenging situation in their career, they used to approach many people and sought their views (not seeking employment help) on solving the problems and successfully managed the crisis.

Developing a vast network is relatively easy for some people, and it may be difficult for some. However, we can create a quality relationship with a few reliable people who can guide us during a tough time. They could be your spouse, friends, mentors, colleagues, senior people, or any professional forums that can guide you without any bias.

We need to ask ourselves is "Do we have trustworthy, reliable sources or relationships in our life whom we can approach when we have challenges in life?"

If yes, then we are leading a healthful life;

If not, then we need to develop a quality relationship or network now…!

Have a great week ahead.

Developing People Management Skill

 Developing People Management Skill 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

As you recall that when we initiated this series on managing emotions for personal and professional growth, we discussed broadly three parts of emotional intelligence

1. Managing self
2. Achievement orientation
3. Managing others

Having discussed the first two parts, let us discuss some of the insights related to Managing Others.

In a professional or organizational context, "managing others" means managing the people to balance both the result and the relationship. The people could be your boss, colleagues, and your junior colleagues.

Some of the questions or dilemma most of the business head and manager  have 

 “How to keep the people motivated to get most despite the challenges and uncertainties”?

"Am I a good leader or manager?"
 
"Am I focussing more on task and compromising soft aspects or more lenient on people and losing focus on the task?"

"Am I balancing task/ result and people/ relationship well?"
 
For all the questions above, the answer lies in our ability to manage emotions regarding people management. People management skill is all about that ability.

Why is people management skill important?

We might have come across some very competent managers in technical or functional expertise but still struggling to cope with relating people and relationship management. Their career growth also slows after some time.

Even with moderate technical or functional expertise, some people are pretty successful in achievement by leveraging people around them. They are liked by all and perceived by others as influencers.

When you are moving up in career ladder, people's skills play a significant role along with functional expertise.
 
Where the gap exists?

The gap is mainly on managing emotions when dealing with people. It is the ability to relate with the people, motivate, tap the potential, manage conflicts, solve complex problems, and influence anyone beyond the functional boundaries.

                                       
 
Let us discuss those aspects in the coming weeks and solicit your personal experiences or challenges on people management.

Stay safe until then!

Looking from other's view

 Looking from other's view

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have been discussing the method of channelizing or regulating the emotions in the workplace, one more effective approach is "looking at the things from other's view."

In most human interactions, everything is right or wrong from the person's standpoint, exposure or experience, context, and timing only.

When i am considering my decision is right, that is based on my experience, my today's context and that decision may be proven wrong by some one's point of view from their expertise, background, and timeline perspective. When we realize this truth, we can develop the ability to look at things from other's views.

This ability will help us to channelize or regulate emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy from competitiveness into positive emotions.

For example, you may get momentarily anger with your junior colleague's quality of work, say preparation of the presentation. When you understand his/ her background, experience, you may realize their weakness, which will help you to cool your emotions and divert into compassion to develop him/ her.

I am not advocating other's mistakes to be accepted as such, but for every error of others, if you suffer from negative emotions, it is not going to help you. Instead, if you develop the ability to recognize the causes for the mistake or low performance from other's perspective, at that moment, that will make you be in positive emotions.

Some people are good at look at things from other's perspectives, and it is a skill to be developed!

Channelizing the emotions

Channelizing the emotions 
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we have discussed the first part of managing emotions in the workplace as "self-awareness, "the second part is "channelizing the emotions" for the growth.
 
What is meant by channelizing the emotions?
 
Every moment we are undergoing different emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, frustrations, anger, and so on. We have two choices in recognizing and managing emotions. Either we use it for our advantage or turn it for a disaster for us and our surroundings. Channelizing the emotion is more about how to recognize the emotion and direct it for betterment for us and the surroundings.
 
Why the channelizing the emotion is important?
 
When we do not know how to channelize the emotions, it hits us back by way of losing peace, losing focus on higher-level growth-oriented activities. Sometimes when we are not keeping the perspective right, the emotions affect our health as well.
 
Hence awareness is required to handle different emotions with different methods as we are dealing with a mix of both positive and negative emotions in everyday transactions with others.
 
For example,
 
In our workplace, predominately, we have the following emotions in our day to day interactions with our colleagues/team/boss and even with the customers.

• Anger (when the things do not happen  as we expect)
• Jealous (when some of our colleague's / competitor does well than us)
• Frustration (when we do not see the result for our effort, or someone does not recognize our work)
• Insecure (when we do not know the direction of future on job/business)
• Feeling low (we do not know what to do in a particular moment; less motivated)
• Irritation (when we work with the person whom we do not like to work)

You can add on the list from your experience!

Each emotion calls for different strategies to channelize the emotions and if we are aware, that will help us for growth.

Let us discuss each emotion and the method of channelizing in the coming weeks!

Developing big picture thinking

Developing big picture thinking

Having discussed the definition of big picture thinking and its benefits on growth, let us understand the process of developing the big picture thinking as an individual.

Once three people were working on the bridge construction. The stranger approached the first person asked what he was doing. The person said, "Can't you see that i am laying stones." The stranger quickly moved on to the second person and asked the same question. The person replied: "I am working on my income to take care of myself and family."

      The stranger moved on to the third person and asked him what he was doing. The person replied with a smile, "I am building a bridge, once the bridge construction is over, many people will pass on. I am helping others to move fast. This bridge will be here centuries after I leave."    
 
       The story has a profound message of how you are looking at your work with a higher purpose makes a difference in the quality of work and life. That is big picture thinking. Here we extend our perspective or thinking from being working for survival to a higher purpose,
 
 Similarly, with your qualifications and experience, you are working as a professional. How do you look at your profession for the next  5-10 years' time? Today, you are running a business in a small way, how do you look at your product/ service and its impact on the market  10~20 years from now?

If you look at your profession as a means for survival, that is low order level thinking. When you extend your thinking about the impact you can create through your job or your business, you are into high order or big picture thinking.

When you are proposing some ideas to your team, and if they are not receiving it well, you may think they are resisting. That is low order thinking or micro-level thinking. The big picture thinking could be either team needs more explanation about the proposal, or they are not ready to digest, or you need to improve the communication skill, or the timing is not perfect. That is big picture thinking. In this process, you are looking at the event from 360 angles.
 
The key is how you are extending your thinking process from minute to higher, wider,360 angle makes you learn the big picture thinking process.
 

Big picture thinking is an art and can be developed at any age with awareness and practice.

Look up -insightful lesson

Recently i came across the viral video,(released 6 years back with more than 6 crores views till now ), and it talks about our addiction to smartphones and social media and losing the personal connection with the real, live human beings in front of us.

Director Gary conceptualized the theme by a story of a lost young man falling in love with a woman who gives him direction and their life together without the hindrance of social media.

Suggest you watch this video with Captions twice, and you will be able to relate how much we are losing our time in WhatsApp/ Facebook / YouTube and other social media blindly without real relationship building with the people next to us.

I hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY

managing emotions in transition

managing emotions in transition

 

As discussed, three stages in the transition process in any change, and there are emotions involved in each step. Effective people are better at managing those emotional aspects.
 
During Expose to Change:

It is natural to get all the emotions like shock, angry, upset. The key is to be aware of those feelings and how you are passing through it. Some people, when they are not aware of it, they react to those emotions by way of outburst and spoiling the relationship.

For example,
you might have observed that in the origination, the moment the boss proposes something, the immediate reaction from any one of the subordinates is "NO" or "NOT POSSIBLE". This is the outcome of inability to manage the emotions during expose to change. (But the same person might have anchored the change successfully but leaves the impression that the person always a skeptic and cynical! )

Hence, this stage calls for awareness of emotions and neutralizes it by calm, listen further, and move on to the next step.

Immersion stage:

Once you pass through the first stage, in this immersion stage, you are mentally accepting the change and undergoing the consequence of the change.

When you feel "Let it Go," that moment, you are allowing yourself for the change or transformation to the next transition.

Recovering stage:

In this stage, you are in reflective feeling and analyzing the pros and cons of the changes. You are discovering a new self, which is more rewarding due to the change event.

For example, when you accept that you need to relocate to a new place as a change, in this phase, your mind took the change and started weighing the good and bad. You are about to see the big picture and some insights as well. That is when you are ready for a transformation.

The point is whether the change event is big or small. Naturally, everyone will undergo three phases of transition, and each stage consists of emotions. How you are aware of feelings and getting new perspectives makes you effective in handling any change!

Why do we resist change initially?

As discussed, the change happens due to self-decision or imposed by the environment or others. When the transition happens from external, we find it more challenging to cope up. The reason could be our mind is evolved to 
 

• Seek certainty by maintaining the status quo
• Seek rewards and happiness
• Avoid any form of threat to current lifestyle
• Minimize the energy to spend on new experiences

This comfort is natural.

Some competent people are aware of the emotions during the transition process, and if we understand the process, easy to manage the transition smoothly.

When others impose the change, everyone needs to undergo the three stages of the transition process. In each step, there are emotions involved. If we manage those emotions in each process, we can handle any change process.

Three stages of transition in any change

 
For example,

In a working place, you are with high expectations of getting a promotion in your job as you believe you are reasonably performing well.
Now you hear the news that you are not getting expected the promotion. That is the change event you need to manage through three stages.

Expose to change:

You heard the news that you are not getting a promotion. The moment you understand this, you are getting shocked, getting angry, start blaming either your boss or organization, feeling low due to a helpless situation, and then becoming upset or sad.

The way you are managing those emotions during the exposure stage is all about managing the transition process.

Immersion stage:

Once you pass through the exposure stage, now you hear the details or justification for not being promoted. You are profoundly going through the disappointment phase
During the phase, you are absorbing and mentally accepting reality.

The way you are managing those emotions during the stage is all about managing the transition process.

Recovering stage:

Then, once you pass through immersion stage, you start introspecting for not being’ promoted, weighing the pro’s and con’s of promotion and you will be getting new insights about your improvement avenues.

The way you are managing those emotions during the stage is all about managing the transition process.

The duration of the stages may differ people to people from a few minutes to a few days !

In all the stages of the transition process, the way we are managing the emotions and look at the emotions from a different perspective is the key to managing any changes smoothly.

Let us discuss those parts next week!

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!)

Criticism - a barrier for effective communication

Improving communication in the workplace

Criticism - a barrier for effective communication

One of the barriers to effective communication is “ criticism.” The moment we get into criticism mode, either the sender or receiver stop the communication flow.
 
What is meant by criticism?
 
Criticism is our judgement about someone or somebody’s activities and expressing more aggressively.

For example,

In one organization, senior design manager found a mistake of his subordinate's design work, called the person and shouted as follows, “you are useless designer, you do not know the design fundamentals, you are simply wasting my time” ... that is criticism ( Actually the manager only recruited junior designer !!)

In another organization, the business head rolled out a new initiative to his team and said, “ you people are never going to take it to forward as I know you failed in the past in similar initiatives.“ That is criticism.

 In both examples, the words are harsh, mainly hitting the person and not giving any improvement direction. That is the characteristics of criticism.

Why are we criticizing others?

We are making a judgement on others may be with good intention only like
 

1. We want others to improve
2. We like/care them to grow 
3. We may not like the way things are  being done
4. Our inherent nature of finding PERFECTION in everything or only seeing a black dot in entire white space.

Either we are criticizing others knowingly or unknowingly, but in reality, our words and expression hurt others. Criticism is affecting others by lowering the self-image or confidence in their process.

Let us discuss the following next week.

What is happening to the sender and receiver during criticism?
What is the alternative to criticism as our intention is still to make others improve?
The difference between criticism and feedback?
The more delicate aspect of giving feedback

Awareness of body language

Improving communication in the workplace

Awareness of body language and state of mind

As discussed last week on the importance of making others feels good in your presence to improve communication, let us consider the importance of body language on the quality of communication.

Whether in face to face or telephonic conversation, before the actual discussion, we are communicating through our posture, quality of tone, eye contact, and facial expression. That is body language. Body language is something others are seeing from you. Your body language is the outcome of your state of mind at any point in time.

If you are happy, energetic, and with enthusiasm, your posture, tone quality, and facial expression would be pleasing to others. Alternatively, when you are angry, fear, sadness, anxiety, your posture, tone, and facial expression would be terrible to others. That sets the quality of communication.

State of mind and body language are interrelated and good news is that you can change your state of mind by changing your body language and vice versa.

For example, when you feel dull, you use to sit with bending posture and your voice may be low. When you stand up, stretch and take a long breath, you feel relaxed and your voice, the expression will be positive.

The point is that you can change your state of mind by changing your posture and vice versa, and this needs to be aware when you are communicating with others as a conscious effort.

Other aspects of effective communication let us discuss next week!
 

How to display respect to others?

Improving Communication in the workplace
 

Displaying Respect 

As discussed last week, preparing others for listening is the first step towards effective communication, and one of the processes is    " displaying respect to others".

How you can display respect to others?:

There are many ways you can show respect to another person; one of the powerful methods is “ Make another person feel good in your presence” through your gestures.

How you are treating another person will make him feel good about himself, and his listening ability improves when you interact with him.

My experience on the other person’s gesture and my self-esteem as happened some years back.

My colleague and I went to our HR manager to discuss some people-related issues. Before the meeting, we checked his availability. When we enter his room, he was busy on his laptop, and he did not ask us to sit. Despite that we sat for more than 10 minutes, he did not have the courtesy to ask us to wait by stating his urgent work. In between his typing, he instructed something to us regarding the people issues, and we were not in a position to listen, and after a while, we left. In this entire process, he never looked at us, and we felt bad about it.

As we understood his urgency, we expected that he could have requested us to wait for a few minutes, and once he finished the task in the laptop, he could have closed his laptop and had given undivided attention. Those small gestures might have made us feel good.

It is natural to neglect others due to urgent work, but it does not matter for the other person. It is essential how another person is feeling in your presence. It looks like common sense and soft aspect, but that makes much difference in other people’s mind. If you do not make another person “feeling good,” you are not preparing him/her ready for your subsequent communication.

If you are rude, always reacting and unappreciative, then people may not feel self-esteemed in your presence. When people are not feeling good enough in your presence, their listening ability also reduces.

Hence, first, make other person feeling good with you by giving respect through your gestures.

Just be aware of your gestures as we need to evolve as a good human being.

Other aspects of effective communication let us discuss next week!

Focus on Process than People

In the workplace or even in a family environment, when the things are not happening as expected, or any problem occurs, the most immediate tendency of us is “fixing who is responsible?”. For any issues, finding the cause is a good thing, but the moment we focus our the cause on “People” factor, it likely turns out as blaming, complaining, justification, arguments and eventually into personal vengeance only.

As I observed with effective leaders, they focus more on fixing the “process factor” than the people. Once the problem occurred, they immediately recognize it, and their thought process moves towards fixing process as they believe that is a proactive approach. They believe that when the process is robust, ignorance, attitude related to people can be solved quickly. Sometimes fixing process may prevent the issue permanently as well as take care of human errors.

For example, some of the mistakes in organizing an event can be minimized when you have a checklist rather than depending solely on people. That is a proactive approach with process focussed.

Shifting the focus on fixing “process” than  “people” is possible with a little bit of awareness on our intention and behavior. For any problem solution lies in process, in turn, the process will take care of people factor also.

Just it needs awareness when we face the problem.

Leading others-Earning Respect

The fifth factor in strengthening the quality of relationship with others in a professional environment is “earning respect”.

As we come across many personalities in a professional life like customers, colleagues, friends, subordinates, and bosses and do the transaction with them, only with a few people, we have respect and admire them. The respect comes from any one or all of the factors

• The way they treat or respect others
• They way they approach the problems
• They way they teach or guide others
• Their technical/ functional / leadership capabilities and so on.

 
Because of the above factors, we have high respect for them, in turn, a good relationship is getting formed. When the quality relationship exists, we are easily influenced by them, and they easily get the things done through us. The foundation for all is they earned our respect through their consistent, positive behavior and actions.

Similarly, when you want to influence others and get the things done, you need to earn respect through your decisive, consistent action which positively impacts them.

Earning respect is a long term process and calls for consistent effort from your end. Once you gain respect from others, your capability to get the things done or leading others also enhances!

Leading Others -Improving Communications 2

In continuation of last week discussion about improving communication in the workplace, there is always challenge in dealing with others on two scenarios

1. When you express yourself  to others
2. When you are getting instruction from others

 
When you express yourself to others – you need to apply purposeful communication practices as we discussed last week.

When you receive information from others also, there is a chance for misinterpretation that leads to a problem. Communication experts are suggesting that when the person is giving instruction, he supposed to ask the recipient to repeat what he said and get confirmed. However, in my opinion, it is the choice of the giver, and we cannot expect or influence others. What is possible at your level is that you can rephrase the statement to the giver and get confirmed about your interpretation quality.

For example, when your colleague is asking for some details about the something, say sales data, you can check with him by rephrasing his statement like sales details of the x year and prompt when he wants, the format he wants and so on. Checking back by rephrasing and prompting may likely prevent communication problem at a later stage. Also, this practice will enhance your alertness and proactiveness in the workplace.

Even though ensuring effective communication is two-way responsibility, your extra effort to explain to others in detail and your proactiveness in confirming with others is always under your control, and it will likely improve your communications skill and in turn, your capability to lead others!

Leading others (Improving Communication)

The Fourth factor in strengthening the quality of relationship in a workplace is improving your communication skill.

Improving communication is not about language proficiency, it is all about the clarity of thought and quality of your expression to others to get things done.

Most of the problems in the workplace are due to lack of proper communication between you and others on a two-way basis.
 
Dealing with communication challenges between you and others:

     In the workplace, most of us are struggling to meet the expectation of others or others are not up to our expectation. One of the reasons could be due to our inability to express our requirement very clearly to others. Expressing our requirements is the art of communication and developing this skill is a lifelong effort as we need to deal with different people, with a different situation, and also we are at a different level of maturity.

      One technique that you can use in a professional environment to get the things done is practicing purposeful communication. It is all about communicating with others by explaining your purpose of the requirement rather than merely saying what do you want.

For example, when you ask for any details from your team, you can go one step further by explaining why you need the details, when exactly you need, how this details would be useful. When you use this technique, there is a high probability that you are getting things done, and your relationship with others also improves.

By nature, the human mind looks for reasoning, when you satisfy it, listening improves and in turn commitment also improves. Also when you take a stretch to explain the requirement with details, you are conveying your respect to others, and you will get it in reciprocation.

Just experiment when you are communicating with others to get things done!

Let us discuss some more communication improvement techniques next week!

Leading others(Enhancing your tolerance)

The third factor in strengthening the quality of relationship in a workplace is enhancing your tolerance.
Tolerance is an attitude towards others whose behavior, opinion, expressions are entirely different from you.

Regarding people, first, you need to admit the fact that people are emerging from different experiences, qualification, aspirations and sometimes that may not be matching with your expectation. When you do not accept the diverse values, opinions, expression of others, internally you lose your cool and externally you behave rudely. Hence the first step in enhancing tolerance is to accept diversity and reality. 

When you accept the reality, then try to understand others by their background and from their perspective. Accordingly, you can modify your response.

For example, you expect your team member to take decisions independently to finish the work at a faster rate. However, in reality, your team member awaits your approval for every small decision, and you may get irritated. When you try to understand your team member's background, you might have realized that he/ she had grown in a conditioned environment and low self-esteem made them get permission from you for every decision. When you understand the background or their perspective, you would be in a position to empower them to take decisions on their own or allow them to experiment to boost confidence level.

Here the key is your acceptance of other's diversity, behavior, understanding background and helping to improve makes a difference in your leadership skill on others.

The point is the world is a mix of diverse population and what you can do through your response will enhance your leadership than reacting to all diverse situation only spoil you and your relationship with others.

However, it does not mean that we are advocating mediocre performance in the workplace. The context needs to be understood in a right perspective!

Leading Others (Connecting with care)

The second factor in strengthening the quality of relationship in the workplace is to connect with care.

Connecting with care means your kindness or how you are showing concern to others when you are dealing with them. The others could be your colleagues, or the people work for you.

For example, when one of your colleagues is undergoing some personal problem, how you are showing your concern or intention to help him is caring or compassion. Most of us display care when others are in trouble. However, what requires in the workplace is during regular time, how we are connecting with our co-employees?

In reality, under normal circumstances, it is not spontaneous for most of us, to connect with others with genuine care. Most of the time, the demonstration of care looks like ritual or artificial. As I read sometime back in LinkedIn survey, 70 % of the people responded that they are not being valued or appreciated by the colleagues.

Why is it sometimes difficult to connect with care?
We may argue that busy or work pressure and so on. From my observation, the reason could be either due to a lack of detailing or not being in the present or more of self-focused.

In my opinion, a simple way to show your care and concern to the fellow human being in the workplace in a day to day interactions is as follows.

• Give respect to others by showing your kindness in your approach and words / Tone.  
• Encourage others to express their opinions & feelings
• Listen without interrupting or tempting to give your advice
• Motivate them to go through the workplace experiences, as you had gone through
• Appreciate when they do good 
• Teach them when they do poor

It just requires awareness, effort, interest on others and also it will strengthen your quality of relationship with others, in turn, it will enhance your leadership capability!