Rephrasing the question for solutions

Asking right questions turn out a major turning point or bring the solutions to the problem. One typical example as most of us aware that Mahatma Gandhi was humiliated by British, he asked himself "If this happens to educated person like me, what about the millions of people in India? That turns out a history.
Besides, asking right question with appropriate rephrasing will bring real solutions approach. 

 For example, 

If you are concerned that  your boss/ colleagues are not valuing your views, you may ask yourself   “Why my boss is not respecting my views?"  (Sometimes spouse also !!!).This question may not lead to much impact as your mind is already filled with a presupposition that boss is not respecting, and you try to find the answers to support your question only. It may bring self-pity, blaming and self-depression.

Instead, if you rephrase it as “How can I make my boss listen to my views ?“ .In this question also, you internally accepted that boss is not accepting you, but your mind will start to think of the solutions part, whereas in first question your thoughts stop at the reasoning level only. Your mind accepts the fact and also starts working on the solutions.

This rephrasing the question needs a little bit awareness on your questioning pattern, and it is possible with practice.Ask a right question with a right frame of mind, and you will get right solutions!

Greatness is in details & care

     

Some time back, I read the interview article by Mr.K.V Kamath, Ex-Chairman of ICICI Bank about his amazing experience with Mr.N R Narayanamoorthy (NRN), founder of Infosys. As they had been friends, one day they went to a hotel for lunch in Bangalore. As they were engaging in a meaningful conversation while entered into the hotel entrance, a janitor welcomed both and opened the door. Kamath was passing through the door, NRN stopped the conversation for a moment, looked at the janitor and asked him with smile “Had your lunch?” .The janitor smiled back and nodded head positively. Then NRN continued the conversation with Kamath and found a table for their meal.Kamath was surprised with that incident and wondered how a  high profile person with many priorities and work pressure had a time or heart to care for fellow human being.He described NRN as great human being.

     You also could have come across such great people in your lifetime either in business or in a personal environment.The greatness is not in a position or financial strength; it is in displaying the modesty, humbleness, simplicity, care for fellow people amidst all work pressure and priorities.

     Sometimes, we are too busy to notice small things which matter most. Our greatness is when we start appreciating little things and care for either it could be people or beauty of this universe. Becoming good to great is all about excellence .

What are you thinking and feeling during conflict?

      When conflict happens between two either at home or in the profession, only a few have the maturity to see the conflict as the difference of opinion and able to take it lightly considering the big picture of family or organizational. Most of the people struggle to differentiate the conflict over issues and personalities. Also, conflict end with compromising, accepting other’s perspectives, forgive, being humble or not getting into blaming or even taking personally.

Your thinking and feeling during the conflict determine your peace of minds. One of the powerful strategy philosopher and psychologists suggest that think of the consequences and think of the event in a time distant, say from a week now, a month now or even a year now. That makes a difference.
For example, recollect a conflict, which ended up intense arguments one year back with your spouse or colleague.Answer yourself whether that event is significant to you or your life now. Mostly, it will not.

Likewise, if you think of the argument’s significance one week or a month down the line or its consequence to your quality of life, most of the conflict ends up smoothly.

It just requires awareness during the conflict. Just try when you get into heated arguments with somebody closer to you and learn!

“Beyond Expression”

Most of us frequently describe the professional boss (even spouse at home!) as “angry person”. We complain as they get angry often.Angry is one of the most labeled emotion which is visible to outside.When we start giving different terms of emotions to the “angry”, we may get different insights.

Sometimes, they get angry because they are impatient with our behavior or results
Sometimes they get angry because they get offended by our words or behavior 
Sometimes they get angry because they frustrated with our behavior or actions
Sometimes they get angry because they annoyed with our behavior or actions

The outcome expression may be angry and look like same all the time, but the reason for the outcome may be different every time.

When we understand other’s intention at surface level, there is less chance for improving relationship or change in self-behavior. If we understand other’s intention at a deep level or different perspectives, there may be a chance to improve the relationship or self-improvement.

It just requires awareness and conscious interest to get the perspectives right!

Reflect and move on

“Dates that come around every year help us measure progress in our lives. One annual event, New Year's Day, is a time of reflection and resolution.” —Joseph Wirthlin

Even though the transformation in personal and business life happens through the changes WITHIN, irrespective of change in calendar years, now, this is the opportune time to plan for change. Instead of merely planning with wishes, it would be effective to look back, learn from the past, and set the direction for the future.

Hence, reflect and evaluate your 2016 in all aspects of life with the right questions. This may help to reinforce the good things you did, realizing the bad things you did. Answering to the following questions may help you to set the direction right on career / business / relationship / financial aspects.

Which initiatives worked well in your business / profession   and which were not?
What motivated me last year and what drained my motivation level?
What factors improved / affected the quality of relationship with family members / peers/ subordinates / clients?
Which factors improved my personal financial success and what not? 
What made me proud of my contributions to others?

Reflection is more powerful than any other form of learnings. Reflect on 2016 and move forward for great 2017 as each one of us are deserved for excellence.

Wishing you and your family & business to achieve extraordinary growth,peace, happy New Year 2017!

Regrets of the dying

Bronnie ware is an Australian nurse who spent many years working in palliative care, taking care of patients in the last weeks of their lives. She collected the information from dying people about their regrets, wishes, missed opportunities etc and she found a common pattern surfaced repeatedly .Based on her experience, she had written a book “Regrets of the dying people” which is a best seller.

The top five regrets emerge from the majority of the people are 

1.I wish I had courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2.I wish I didn’t work so hard
3.I wish I had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5.I wish that I had let myself be happier

Those above regrets may not be the expression of entire humanity as it is not statistical proven,yet  the sample may reflect the quality of life .Most of us are living with sub standard life against our inner deep desire .Striving for fulfillment must be a conscious decision and that requires awareness .

Let us be aware of our quality of living!

What does prevent us to express timely?

The value of “life aspects” is only when we nourish its value when it is with us. The “life aspects” could be like health, wealth, knowledge, profession, relationship etc. When something is lost, we realize the value of it or associate it with more memories.

In personal life, we use to take the people relationship as granted, especially with people in our close circles. We tend to value people after we lost them or they moved away from us. After losing, either regret about the inability to nurture the relationship or start valuing by way of praising the positive side of the personalities (as nostalgia rituals!!). Even in professional life, we use to appreciate or endorse the qualities of the person during a farewell session as a routine. The person could have enjoyed the association more with us, if he/she had been endorsed or acknowledged or appreciated for his personality when he/ she were with us.

As life is too short and uncertainty, what does prevent us from nurturing the relationship and expressing timely? We may list work pressure, lack of time, ego etc, but more than anything else, it just needs a deep awareness of the fact of life.

As someone quoted, “Sometimes the words we leave unspoken are the most important ones that should have been said” is much more valid for the relationship especially with our close circles.

Factors enabling the harmony at the workplace

As discussed last week, in personal and professional life, maintaining harmony with our daily interesting people is must have peace of mind, quality of work, in turn growth and happiness.

Irrespective of the difference of opinion or conflict with others, still harmony can be maintained.If we observe highly successful and matured people, we can notice some of the practices while interacting with others.

 Easily approachable 
 Connecting others with care
 Consistency in behavior
 Giving self first 
 Respecting and not approaching with fixed perception
 Be helpful, friendly and firm 

Maintaining harmony with others is a conscious choice for growth and happiness, which is possible with practice.

The given video link demonstrates the improvement in the relationship between boss and subordinate with the above factors…

Hope you enjoy it…

https://goo.gl/Jn361N

Why do we struggle to keep harmony with others?

   As discussed last week, in personal and professional life, maintaining harmony with our daily interacting people is must to have peace of mind, quality of work, in turn growth and happiness.

   However, in reality, we struggle to maintain harmony with others.Rather than looking the reason from the other’s point of view,let us look it from within us. One of the expectation or condition, we set ourselves to maintain harmony with others is not accepting others if they differ from our thought process or opinion. This is strongly conditioned in our mind.

    However, the nature reveals that no creation is same as others, each is unique.No two people can have same likings and thought process.We tend to mix people and issue together. Let us accept people, especially those are influencing our life on a daily basis .Accept them as such ,separate the intellectual part from the people part .Once if we accept the people as such , then we are open to see other good qualities of those people. It may be difficult for most of us to practice this, but this awareness is required to improve the quality of relationship.

    Let us the discuss the factors will enable improved harmony next week.

Why should maintain harmony with others?

   The most impactful people in our life are the ones with whom we are interacting more on a daily basis. They could be family members, boss, colleagues, peers, and subordinates as we spend most of the time with them only.

       The quality of relationship or harmony with them is important.When there is disharmony in any of the elements, it would affect your peace of mind that would affect your quality of work. Just imagine that your harmony with your boss is strained, will you able to do quality of work? Likewise, your harmony at domestic will affect your quality of work. Quality of work determines your growth and happiness.

    

     Hence, for your own sake, of happiness and growth, you need to maintain a high level of harmony with others who are interacting with you most of your lifetime.But in reality, there is some misconception about maintaining harmony and there are some factors affecting the harmony.Let us discuss next week!!

Life decisions with long term perspectives

If we look at any great organization’s history, they had many struggles to deliver consistent results, but still they are existing today and making an impact is due to their decision making in crucial times based on long-term perspective. Similarly, if we observe  any successful married  couples, they could be your parents, they might have faced many struggles in their lifetime, but still they made a difference as role models, it could be due to  their decision making in important stages of life  was based on  long term perspective.

One of the profound management principles of Toyota, which says, “Base your management decisions on long term philosophy, even at the cost of short term benefits.”

Sometimes, we are tempted for short-term benefits in career switch or job switch decision making which cost our potential to make an impact on long term.

Most of the relationship issues arise when one of them takes a call considering short-term pain or gain foregoing the long-term happiness.

In fact, in the stock market, those who stay long term make more money than short-term traders do, even though there is so much of hype and temptation about short term trading.

Look around any achievements, impacts, inventions; it could be made possible due to long-term perspective of the person involved, even at the cost of short-term temptations or benefits.

Just be aware of your life decisions whether they are for short-term gains or avoiding short-term pains or they are for long-term impact and happiness. 

Why do some people struggle for career growth and others not?

    A real fulfillment comes only through career growth. Career growth means an opportunity to make an impact for others through leveraging our potential, position, and competency. Some time we worry too much about the delay in recognition or promotion etc. According to me, those are all temporary in nature and most of the time, it is beyond your control. Whereas career growth is long term, more meaningful to measure and it is predominately influenced by you.

    At any  given point of time, considering your qualification, years of service and perceived potential, look at your career graph, if is well with your expectation, it is fine, if it is not, definitely the reason may  not be due to others  like your organization, boss, colleagues etc..

    In any modern performance management system, two underlying factors are deciding our career growth. One is what you are delivering against the expectation and second is how you are delivering. To put differently, it is a combination of your result and relationship. Those factors are purely under your influence.

To give more perspective, created a video and if you are interested, Pl view and subscribe for more videos on career growth.

https://goo.gl/7uKUqJ

Leadership Insight

You may be aware of E. Sreedharan, a man behind in modern metro rail transportation system in  India and popularly known as “Metro Man".His contribution as technocrats who modernized the country’s railway transportation to global standards. It could be Konkan rail lines which is known as one of the engineering excellence, or could be a modern metro rail  in Delhi. While most of us  were skeptical about metro solutions, the success of Delhi metro paved way for metro solutions in more than 20 cities in India.

Under his leadership, Delhi metro lines were completed before the due date and budget. His project management practices are  case studies  for aspiring project managers and business school students.

On understanding his background, now the leadership insight from him. 

Whenever a query asked about his lifetime achievement, everyone expects the answer could be some of his best work, like Konkan, Pamban bridge, or metro line etc. But he used to reply, “The important achievement in my life is I could able to instill the confidence to my engineers that enabled them to work competently”.

According to me, this is a very profound statement on leadership  and it is required in every organization that looks for transformation. As a leader of  an organization or our team, our primary  responsibility is showing the possibilities for the team, instill the confidence and backup them in any circumstances. People come from different background, level of competency  and confidence level and leader’s  job is to enhance the hope, positivity and confidence in them to deliver the best!.That is leadership.

Happy to see your comments on this leadership insight.

Building Trust

  “The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time – Stephen Covey

Building trust is important for personal,professional and business growth.

What is meant by Trust?

 It is others in your relationship,should believe that you are genuine,your product or service is genuine,or you are capable of doing something worthy,your product or service is worthy.

How Trust can be built? 

Trust  can be built based on “Consistent action and delivery” over a period of time. It is not one time effort or performance. Generally, based on our past consistent behavior or actions, others come to form perception, that is trust.

For example, in a professional environment, if you are consistent in keeping up your commitment  every time, others start trusting you as “committed”.Alternatively, if you commit something and everytime you show up with excuse, others form perception that you are "not dependable". This way only, you build the perception   about you to others.

Similarly, in business, your customers build the trust about your product or service based on the consistent performance of your product or quality of service, how your organization responds to customers.

Hence, building trust is not one time effort, it is CONSISTENT EFFORT and if you would like to preserve the relationship with team, customers, family members or advance your professional growth, do any good thing consistently over a period of time and build trust as this helps your growth !!!

Managing Expectation -Part 9

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others, both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions, approach to manage the expectation as it is difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving  communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving 
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequences

Having discussed first two solutions approach, we discuss the third solutions approach

Deciding the choice and accepting the consequences:

It is very difficult to fulfill all the expectation of others, even though others are related to us in one way or another. To some extent, we can take effort to improve our competency, communication, and interpersonal capabilities to manage the expectation. Most importantly, we can decide the priority in life or decide which relationship we would like to preserve most. Based on the choice or decision, we manage the expectation. However, we need to accept the consequence once the choice or decision taken.

For example, you come across better career advancement opportunity, but you are rejecting the opportunities to fulfill the expectation of your family members. That is your choice and it may be good for you. Once you decide the choice, accept any consequence of career growth. The problem arises only when you are not accepting the consequence and internally feeling guilty about your choice. 

Ultimately, you need to decide which is important to you, which relationship you want to preserve most, take a decision, and accept the consequence happily. This mindset is required for balanced growth and happy life.

Managing Expectation part 8

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others, both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions, approach to manage the expectation as it is difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving  communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving 
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequences

Improving communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving:

      In professional life, we are struggling to meet the expectation of others or others are not up to our expectation is probably due to our inability to express our requirement very clearly… Expressing our requirements clearly is the art of communication and developing this skill is a life long effort as we need to deal with different people, with different situation and we are at different level of maturity.

      One technique we can use in a professional environment is PURPOSEFUL COMMUNICATION. when we ask for any details from team, we can go one step further by explaining why we need the data, when exactly we need, how this data would be useful .By explaining this in detail, we respect others as individual  and there is likely  less chance for  misunderstanding the expectation.

      Also developing the skill of giving the right feedback at the right time to others when things are not going as per our expectation helps to correct the situation as well as to improve the relationship. Similarly, we can develop the EGO free attitude for asking feedback from others when we are not clear on the communication or expectation of others.

Managing Expectation part 7

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others  both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions approach to manage the expectation as it is  difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving the communication and feedback
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequence

Taking responsibility to  improve  the  competency:

       One of the reasons we struggle to fulfill the expectation of others in professional life  is the lack of required competency which organization or others  expect  from us. The one of the ways to cope up with the expectation is  to continuously  upgrade the competency. Competency is the combination of knowledge, skill and attitude towards the task. 

       Depending upon your profession, there is a need to continually update the core knowledge or technical skill. Apart from core skill development, other  management skills like able to prioritize the activities, able to extract the essence of the  information, able to get things down from others,  leveraging technology and others for personal productivity  and so on  needs to be developed.

       As per recent research by World economic forum, Problem solving skill is being top skill expected in the organization. Most of the misunderstandings between peers, boss and subordinate  arises due to lack of  understanding the big picture, detailing to data, analyzing the data, connecting the dots, interpreting the information, articulating the pro’s and con’s of actions  and ability to communicate the solutions approach etc .

      Development and mastering  above competency  is  a life long experience. As said earlier, managing the expectation is also a life long experience!.Hence invest yourself in improving your competency.

Managing Expectation part 6

      Past weeks, we discussed  three  insights on  expectation. First, when there is a relationship, there must be an expectation. Second, in  a relationship, since someone is believing that you are the person  capable of meeting their needs, thereby expectation rises. If we want to preserve the relationship,  it  becomes our responsibility to manage the expectation. . Third, we cannot control other’s expectation and it is difficult to fulfill other expectation all the time, only we need to learn to manage or balance the expectation.

We will discuss  fourth insights  of expectation 

Insight 4:

"In a relationship, the expectation is not explicitly expressed"

      Most of the time, as we take relationship as GRANTED, we restrict the expression of our expectation to others. When we are not  explicitly expressing our expectation, it creates misunderstanding, disappointments and frustration in a relationship.

For example,

       as a manager, you  want to cut down the expenses and  expect your  team member to prepare the expense analysis. Your  team member is also preparing and presenting you all the data with analysis. But still internally you may be disappointed with your team ‘s performance. The reason could be internally you are expecting decision points  or solutions approach where you are getting only the accumulated data and analysis. You  might have assumed or taken granted, you team member understood your internal expectation and when the reality is not so, you are getting disappointed.

      Similarly, in personal life, your spouse / children want you to spend time with them and they may ask for taking them to short outings. Even after you spend your time and money on the picnic or outing, they may get upset with you. The reason could be the real expectation n is spending quality time with you and  you had not fulfilled during outings. Since it is an intimate relationship, things are taken  granted and the expression is not explicitly expressed.
The point to understand is in a relationship, most of the time, things are taken granted and the expectation is not expressed clearly. Once we understand these insights, we can discuss the solutions approach in the coming weeks..

Managing Expectation part 5

Past weeks, we discussed  two insights on  expectation.First, when there is a relationship, there must be an expectation. Second, in  a relationship, since someone is believing that you are the person  capable of meeting their needs, thereby expectation rises. If we want to preserve the relationship, it  becomes our responsibility to manage the expectation. This  reflection will relieve the stress  to some extend on managing the expectation.

We will discuss  third insights  of expectation 

Insight 3:

"You cannot control other’s expectation"

Even though our intention must be to fulfill the expectation of others to the maximum extent possible, we must also realize the fact that we cannot control other’s expectation of us. That means, others can expect anything from us, it is not possible always to fulfill  the  expectation. It  requires a balanced approach to managing the expectation and relationship.

This insight is important, failing which only, sometimes, we want to please all people and in this process, either we lose  our   temperament or personality  or disappoint  everyone surrounding us. 

For example, through your business, you are providing service  and your customer is  expecting more from you and sometimes expecting unreasonably say superior performance, lowest cost, and fastest delivery. You cannot control the customer’s expectation. At the same time, you may not able to fulfill all expectation, as you know it is a tradeoff between cost, speed, and delivery. 

Here what you must learn is how to manage the unreasonable expectation and retain the relationship, not on trying to please others at the cost of your profitability and peace .

We discuss the solution part once we outline one more insights on expectation next week !.

Managing Expectation -Part 4

Managing Expectation part 4

     Last week, we discussed that when there is a relationship, there must be an expectation. Alternatively expectation arises  only there is some form of relationship. Now we understand why someone is expecting from us or we are expecting something from our relationship?

Insight 2:

Why someone is expecting from us? Because others are believing that you are capable of fulfilling their expectations.

For example, 

you are expecting more from you, because subconsciously you believe that you have more potential.

In a  professional environment, your boss is expecting more from you than other  colleagues, because he believes you have more potential and  capability to deliver.

In family life, family members are expecting more of your time  with them,because  they believe that  you are the source of love, source of care, source of affection.
Your friend  is  sharing  his problems with  you, because he is  believing that you can provide perspective or solutions to the problem.
In a nutshell, someone who is having a relationship with us, believing that we  can fulfill their expectations.

If you understand this fact, Is it not previlege for  you  for having such a relationship in your life ????..If this is previege  or a gift you got in your life, is not your responsibility to make an effort to fulfill the expectation of the relationship ??

If you internalize this insight, you will never be feel stressed  on managing the expectation..You thank God for having so  many people in your life believes that you can deliver, then managing expectation becomes easier… Reflect on it till next week!!!