How Trust can be built?

In a professional or family relationship, Trust can be built based on “Consistent behavior and action"  over a period of time. It is not a one-time effort. Generally, based on our past consistent or repeated behavior and actions only, others form a 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 on commitment is concerned.

When colleagues are approaching you every time for a guidance or solution, if you are consistent in your approachability, then others are forming a trust on you as "easily approachable and solution provider". Alternatively, if there is inconsistency in your behaviour or action every time, you seem to be "vulnerable" and trust is not formed on the approachability. 

The point is that in every aspect of your behavior and action, if there is consistency, accordingly trust is built on the particular behavior and action.

Hence, building trust is not a one-time effort, it is CONSISTENT EFFORT and if you would like to preserve the relationship with the team, customers, family members, show up consistency in your behavior and action on anything.

when you want to lead others, trust has to be earned by YOU and it is an effort!

Why should Trust be Built?

Having discussed TRUST is an underlying thread in a relationship; let us understand why building trust is essential to lead others particularly in a professional environment.

Trust is evergreen required quality in a relationship, with the changing working environment now, it is utmost needed to develop the influencing capability.

What is the change in the working environment?

The work environment is rapidly changing. Earlier, people look up someone as their lead for knowledge, information, age, and experience they possess. Now with the abundance of information availability thanks to digital evolution and humungous opportunities across the world for survival and growth, people are no more looking up for someone for a reason stated above. Instead, people are now looking up someone as their lead for their wisdom, insights, mentoring or solution providing capabilities for the specific challenges.

To sum up, the workplace is changing from commanding to inspiring, in turn, positive influencing to get the things done.

For any onetime transaction or for short-term benefits, commanding or pushing may help to get the things done. If you are looking for long-term association, positively influence others to get things done and peaceful transaction between you and others, building trust is required.

You shall deserve yourself as a person to look up, only when you develop yourself and you are proven as “ TRUSTED “ by your colleagues or networks.

In the above context, trust building becomes important.

The question is on what areas, you need to develop trust and how to build trust among people. Let us discuss next week!
 

Leading Others (Building Trust)

One of the factors to enhance the quality of a relationship is building trust which will improve your capability to lead others.

What is meant by Trust?

 Trust can be understood as a strong feeling or invisible connecting bond between you and others. 

The others in your professional or family circle should believe or strongly convince that you are

1.Genuine in your intentions
2.Capable of providing solutions or doing something worthy
3.Dependable for outcome 

In any relationship, any one or all the above is strongly expected or to be felt.

For example, in mother and child relationship, the strong conviction of a child about mother is unconditional love and care, that is trust.

In teacher and student relationship, the strong conviction of a student about the teacher is knowledge sharing and care, that is trust.

In a doctor and patient relationship, the strong conviction of a patient about the doctor is cure from disease, that is trust.

In an employer and employee relationship, the strong conviction of both on each other is guaranteed on survival, learning, and growth, that is trust.

In a seller and buyer relationship, the conviction of a buyer is on the quality of product or service, that is trust.

So, in all relationship, there is a hidden undisputed expectation or strong conviction exists between both or anyone. That can be termed as TRUST.

When we understand the TRUST factor is underlying thread in a relationship, let us discuss Why building trust is important and how to build trust in a professional context next week.

Leading Others

The second step in the personal development process is to learn to lead others
 
What does “leading others ” mean?

Leading others is not just commanding or dominating others. It is more about strengthening the quality of relationship with others.It is all about the way you are connecting or relating with others. That quality of relationship will determine your capability to lead others.
 
Why do we need to learn to lead others?
 
To be successful in professional life, it is not sufficient to be “individual outstanding performer”, we need others for our success and growth.
 
Also, when you are growing up in a career, your relationship quality is equally important as your functional competency. Hence, it would help if you mastered the art of managing the relationship with others, despite your past success as an individual contributor.

How to strengthen your quality of the relationship?

As said, strengthening the relationship is an art and with a little bit of awareness and practice, anyone can improve the relationship skills.
 
Given below some of the factors contributing to strengthening the quality of the relationship.
 
1.Building Trust
2.Connecting with Care
3.Enhancing the tolerance
4.Improving communication
5.Earning the respect

When we enhance our perspectives on the above factors, eventually we can strengthen the quality of relationship .

Let us discuss each factors next week. 

Preserving Quality of Relationship

    

Most of the time, we use to be emotionally upset or hurt by close relationships like family members, relatives, friends due to their communications, behaviors or actions. Any stranger may not have much impact on our emotions.

      When we emotionally upset, either we tend to reciprocate to them with outburst or we tend to think too much about the incidents or the person who causes the hurt. Eventually, without our consciousness, we start recalling all unfavorable moments with the person in the past and it reinforces our emotional outburst further. In this process, we spoil our health/mind and further strain the quality of the relationship.

     What is required at the moment is just awareness on our thought process. Instead of rewinding one bad moment for many times and affecting the relationship, rewind the Positive moments many times and cherish the relationship. They are dear ones and part of our lives on many occasions as wellwisher. The quality of the relationship has to be preserved without any further straining the relationship with our thought process.The point is some relationship come across your life and stays with you for a long time for a purpose and it has to be preserved even though a few emotional outbursts happen. It needs awareness, patience, and compassion!!.

How to accelerate your career growth?

Generally, in our country, we are associating our identity based on our profession. You might have come across retired people also cherish and claim their status based on past professional accolades or achievements only. Even we introduce ourselves to others by quoting what we do. That is inherently we perceive job is essential for self-identity (saints or philosophers are exceptions!) 

Also, except a few who born into a wealthy family, for most of the people, survival, wealth creation, positional status, respect in the family and society comes from the profession only. The profession could be either working self (business)or working for some as an employee. In any way, we get our happiness, wealth, status, lifestyle, practical knowledge, wisdom from work only. Unlike the western style of theory, we can not separate work and life separately. Both are interrelated.

If you take the average life expectancy of a person is 68 years, then likely 50 % of the life time, we are spending our experience with a career and its related activities. When we give 50 % of our lifetime to our profession and all materialistic and personal development occured through the profession, how can we accelerate the professional growth in a right, ethical manner so that growth will help you and others?

Many types of research are going on professional or career growth. However, would like to discuss some perspectives on the science of growth in a professional environment 

Generally, the pace of professional growth differs according to one’s educational qualification, exposure to a different learning environment, industry served. However, given the potential, there are TWO FACTORS  as demonstrated by you determines your consistent growth. 

1.Focusing & Producing Results
                AND
2.Building Relationship with others  

You must notice that both factors are equally required for long-term, consistent growth. It is not either or condition but both.

You may relate to your known/senior colleagues who have grown consistently or the person who has not grown in line with their potential.
In case of a slow growth-oriented person, you may realize that either one of the factors was lacking w.r.t reference to their position. Either they might be competent in their functional domain but lacks on soft skills or they are good in dealing with others, but lack of competency or in delivering a result.
In case of consistent growth-oriented persons, you may realize that they had balanced both factors during their career path.

Balancing of what you deliver and how you deliver are equally important when others consider you for next level growth.

For example, if you are a manager, it is expected to produce results as expected at your level and also to behave in a  certain maturity at this positional level. When you lack to produce either result or lack to display some level of relationship maturity, your growth to the next level, say senior manager in a typical case, delays or stops at the manager level only.
The point is you need to balance both and demonstrate what is expected at your existing position decides your next level growth.

Now, the action is to look at your career graph, given your qualification, age, years of experience, are you growing consistently? If you answer is "yes", you are balancing both w.r.t to your position and strengthen it further. If your answer is “No,” try to understand where you need to improve either in RESULT or in RELATIONSHIP instead of pointing others.

Let us understand further on the definition of RESULT and RELATIONSHIP and their drivers.

As discussed, one of the factors for accelerating career growth is consistency in result w.r.t to the position. Let us understand the “ expectation on result and enablers of result orientation.”

    One of my known friends was exceptionally done well at a managerial position, and his boss impressed with his performance and elevated to General Manager level. The boss expectation was to develop the business to the next level using the person’s capability. Here the expectation is to deliver business results. After some time, the boss became unhappy with his performance since my friend still behaved and delivered the result as a functional manager. When I observed and interacted with him, I realized, he was not equipping himself for the new set of deliverables.

      Here the issue is conflicting between the expectation vs. reality and no development efforts to improve the performance w.r.t new role. The approach must be the friend must enhance his knowledge, skills, and attitude towards business development and deliver result than being complacent with legacy or functional delivery alone.

      The fact is the RESULT is a  function of your knowledge about your industry, business, customer,  domain expertise, skills and more importantly your attitude in line with your position. When you are growing in your career ladder, you need to equip yourself on knowledge which is required for the job and your perspective. Also, your skills like problem-solving capabilities, communication, decision making also need to be in line with the expectation of the position. To sum up, your COMPETENCY has to be enhanced to deliver RESULTS w.r.t your position. When you are not developing your competency, your growth stops.

Hence, enhance your competency to deliver the result as this is the only shortcut for accelerating growth. 

Let us discuss “ Relationship “ factor and the enablers.

As discussed, the other factor for accelerating career growth is “ Building relationship with others”.

When we say a building relationship with others in a professional environment, it is all about how you are relating with others. Equally, how others feel when they approach you,interact and work with you in a professional setup.

Enablers of building a relationship from your end :

Respect others as such and their time  &  privacy
Giving your undivided time  to others when they need (approachability)
Helping others with your presence  or with your competency

How can you develop your relationship quality with others?

1.    Knowing more about yourself

2.    Developing your emotional intelligence

3.    Improving your communication skill as a lifelong exercise

Building a relationship is not a one-time effort. This calls for consistency.

When you are growing in your career ladder, your soft skill in handling people matters a lot along with Performance.

The action is to identify your weak spot in developing a relationship and work on that to accelerate our career growth!  

Accelerate your career by balancing result and relationship!  
 

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!
 

Who is a winner when you quarrel?

There were a couple of lions lived in a forest.One day, both felt thirsty and reached the water pond.They immediately began to argue about who should satisfy their thirst first.The argument became quarrel and each took a stand to die in the quarrel rather than give up the privilege of being first to quench the thirst.

       They started attacking each other as their emotions turned into rage. Suddenly they stopped their attack and looked up at the sky as there was a flock of vultures circling the pond. Those vultures were eagerly waiting for the loser to die and it would become a feast for them for a week.

       On realizing the intention of the vultures, both lions stopped their quarrel and shared the water together to quench the thirst and walked away. The vultures disappointed.

Moral of the story:

When you quarrel each other as a couple for a silly reason, the loss would be family harmony only. Similarly even in the organization, when we spent energy on small things and argued for hours, the loser would be the organization, and the winner would be your competition.

Be aware of what for you are fighting and against whom you are fighting! 

Preserving Relationship

Generally, we get hurt more by close relationships either family members or with people in a professional environment than strangers. When we get hurt, our tendency would be thinking too much about the incident or the person cause it.Eventually, we start recalling all unfavorable moments happened earlier with the person and forming negative emotions about the person. When this occurrence repeats frequently, the gap is also widening over a period.

       When the gap is widening, even the other person does a favor for us, we tend to look at with skepticism.In this process, the quality of the relationship is strained.The one way of approaching this mindset is to value the relationship by recalling one best moment or favor we experienced with that person.Instead of rewinding one bad moment for many times and affecting the relationship, rewind the positive moments for many times and cherish the relationship.No one is perfect in all for every time.

         The point is many people are coming across on our life journey and some relationships staying with us for a lifelong for some purpose and let us preserve it with patience and compassion .!!

When your inherent strength turns out weakness?

Inherently, each one of us gifted with positive qualities or strength to manage the personal or professional challenges.For example, the strength could be honesty, focusing on result, straightforwardness, decisiveness, confidence, etc .Those strengths will be boon for you during normal circumstances only. During a stressful time, when you use the same strength in overdose, it would become negative. During those time your inherent strength + some more positive strength to be used with consciousness.

Let me explain further 

For example, you may have strength “Confidence of getting things done from your colleagues.” During crisis time or when things are not going well as you expect, your tendency will be using your inherent strength. Further, you apply the “ confidence ”in overdose, it turns out as“arrogance," and the situation would become worst.

Highly effective people are aware of this paradox, and they always use further good qualities during crisis time and make the situation better. As in above example, along with confidence they use additional qualities such as being reflective + humility, then the result would be better.

To put it simply, during illness, when 100  mg antibiotics are not effective, we tend to go for 250 mg, ended up with more complication since the actual system needs  100 mg antibiotics + some other vitamin to overcome the illness, not just overdosage of same antibiotics.

The point is just to be aware of your inherent strength and use it appropriately. When you overuse the same strength during setbacks, it turnout weakness. Alternatively, in conjunction n with your inherent strength, apply other positive qualities as well.

Who is with you , past or future reminder?

We are always surrounded by two types of people and they influence the progress in personal and professional life. They are either past oriented or future oriented.

They display certain characterizes with us during any interactions 

Past-oriented:

They are more oriented towards past.Whenever  we  propose or suggest something, they immediately respond as follows 

"I had already tried this.it won’t work or I had done those days itself, nothing new".

Either way, like legacy or past wound memories, affect our progress on the proposal.

Future-oriented:

They are more oriented towards future, possibilities, and opportunities and always look for new. They are too optimistic or positive about new possibilities, but they may be encouraging you to progress.

In one of the interview, Google CEO Mr.Sundar Pitchai was asked about his selection as CEO and the reason for it. He replied with guessing that one of the reasons could be his practice of thinking and be interacting with his management team about the future possibilities of Google products and services. That may be one of the reasons he was chosen for this role.

The point is that legacy or past worries may not help today as the environment is keeping on change. The world is looking for futurist and who can think of new possibilities and opportunities.

Just be aware of your style of the thinking process and whom you are surrounded most of the time, past or future reminders?

Words mould your personality

There is no doubt that quality of thinking determines our quality of life. Equally the WORDS we use daily or frequently in personal & professional life determines our personality and quality of life. The type of words we use frequently either makes or hurts.

If we observe highly effective people, we may notice that they are very careful in choosing the words while speaking/writing  and they use mostly energizing words as much as possible. By that way, they are influencing others positively.

Some of the words frequently used by them

Thanks / Please / Help / challenge /well/ gifted/ blessing / appreciate/ excellence/ excellent/healthy/ wealthy / effort / goodwill / good / nice/ faith full / extraordinary/ grace/ possibilities / Responsibility / vision / inspiring / winning spirit  / happy/ opportunities, challenges /growth/ Success /grateful / learning

Those words are not cliché. They represent the person’s attitude towards life.
Just be aware of your words as they silently making an impact in your inner world which manifest as your personality externally.

Some people, they are gifted with right usage of words due to their upbringing and environment. But others, the good news is that it can be learned and inculcated with effort.

Pl SHARE to me some of the ENERGISING WORDS you come across as you use or from others!!!

Empathy –explained easily

Most of the communication and interpersonal relationship issues in the organization or in family arise when we are not understanding others from their perspective, from their thinking and feeling. This result in arguments, blaming, abusing and finally results in straining the quality of the relationship.

Everyone has their own stories and hardships. If we understand others, their thinking, their feeling, then our way of looking at them would be different as everyone is undergoing different emotions at any point in time and to deal with them, empathy is required.

I came across a below video which explains the empathy in a beautiful way and I understand that this is being used for educating medical professionals to treat others in an empathetic way …
Pl watch it when you have time …thanks to Cleveland clinics on education series

https://goo.gl/YqsP2H

Why are we reluctant to appreciate others?

One of the common complaints or phrases, I use to hear in an unorganized or small organization from employees is “I am not getting appreciation from my colleagues or manager”. In fact, it is not heard in a family environment, but it would be the hidden cause of all the domestic arguments and fights.It is particularly from spouse!

Why we are reluctant to appreciate others when they do even small good work?

The psychological reasons for this reluctance to appreciate others could be
Fear of losing control 
More of self-centered and thinking as if no time for anything else
Taking granted others as they are part of us 
Poor self-esteem or low confidence
Not being in awareness or always busy in something 

This needs self-introspection within us.

One of the studies said that the person needs to be in a positive frame of mind. If one is not in a positive state, he/she cannot able to appreciate others. Hence, appreciation is not for only motivating others, it is a measure of our wellness of mental strength. 

Relook your habit of appreciation of others and frequency, especially the people in your family and the people are working for you. It reflects your mental health. 

How to work with non likeminded people?

We enjoy what we do only when the colleagues, partners, teammates are in almost same wavelength, that is a similar thought process, acceptance, understandings about the intentions etc .However in reality, we may work with the people who may not be similar thought level. Practically you may not have an immediate solution to move away from them, the only option left out is to cope with them.

How to deal with those people?

Accept their qualities as such. The moment you accept them, you mentally prepare yourself to work with them

As you think more about them, you are developing negativity about others and reinforce your non-acceptance.

Think & distant yourself  beyond them as  life provides a lot of opportunities to enjoy and  then you  realize how small they are in your life

Least, you relate with nature.Nothing lasts forever like cyclic of day and night.Everything will change 

The point is you can not change all the things as you like, but you need to adapt to reality as ultimately you need to do a lot in a short span and your peace of mind is important!

Imposing change on self

There was a saint believed to have tremendous power to solve all kinds of life problems. One day, a middle aged man approached the saint to solve his personal problem. He narrated the saint with the list of complaints against his wife.It was quite apparent that his every effort to reform or change his wife’s behavior had proved a failure. He requested saint to help him.

Patiently listening to the man, the saint said, “I can assure you excellent married life, provided you become a better husband”.

Confused with the reply, the man curiously asked him, “What should I do for that”.

The saint replied “First give up all your efforts to change her as a better wife”

Moral of the story:

Not only in family relationship, in all relationships, no one will change their basic attitude and behavior easily for others, unless there is compelling need is felt.Hence, accept the people as such as it requires a major mindset change within us. That is relatively easier than any effort to change others.In a relationship, any form of imposing change only results in frustration and hurt in long run.

Moving from managing to coaching

One of the lesson or habit we need to learn when we grow either in personal or professional life is listening to others and allowing others to take a decision on their own.

Since we have grown up in an environment where obeying to senior’s instruction as perceived as discipline, the same mentality we are bringing in when we become an adult. We expect ourselves to give a bunch of advice to others and expect them to own. 

The real maturity of growth lies in when we move from managing to coaching. Everyone has to go through the path from managing to coaching.
For example, as a parent, we need to manage child as long as they are in childhood by giving advice on do’s and don’ts, getting into nitty gritty of all activities and decisions. That is fine as they are in childhood.When  they become an adult, the best way to manage them is to give the perspectives of pro’s and con’s of any decision and let them own the decision and consequence.

Similarly, when you are managing the people at a functional level, it is ok by giving advice and owning the result. When you move up the ladder into senior level, it is expected to make the people own the decision and your role is just to guide with possible approaches and their likely consequences.

When we continue to manage, stress crops in a relationship, ownership missing on the results from others. Just be aware of your level and role as manager or coach.

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.

What to do when others hurt you?

You might have come across a situation someone had hurt you by their words or action  either by family members or by your colleagues or business partners .As a chain reaction, you would be thinking of the person or event for a longer duration say days, weeks ,even for years !!.Internally you would be feeling of resentment or bitterness about the person or event.

How this feeling of resentment affects you?

It affects your physical health and also your mental strength, in turn affects your quality of your work.

How to handle this feeling of resentment?

Only by way of forgiving. We had learnt the different definition of forgiveness from our education, ancestors, spiritual masters and some of us  think that forgiving mindset is beyond human capacity. Actually, forgiveness is not about forgetting the event or person which is practically difficult, but it is the ability to look at the person or event in a different perspective 

What are the different perspectives?

oThe other person hurt us with his words or action; because the person comes from different background and experience.He behaves with others too. Hence it is not your issue. This will calm you down to some extent
oHow do you behave in such a situation? This will help you to understand others
oLook at event’s or person‘s behavior with reference to a time frame, say after a year or 5 years from now. You may feel not to worth to worry too much.
o Life is too short and it is not worth to trade your peace of mind with that incident and move forward.

The above perspective will give strength to forgive the person or event. Ultimately your quality of life is important and how you choose the response makes a difference!!!!

Do we need tough time to appreciate value ?

           Most of the time, we use to approach the aspects of life as granted. The reason could be we get  everything easily and we do not see much value in it. While everything goes right, our tendency to assume that it happens due to our brilliance or effort and hesitate to appreciate the giftedness which we have got through this life.

        To balance this mindset only, nature always plays with balance and equanimity principle. To appreciate the value of life and its blessings, challenges or difficulties are given

For example, 

When we get sick, we appreciate the value of fitness and respect the physical body
When we lose materialistically, we appreciate the value of hard earned money
When we are alone, we appreciate the value of relationships 
When we are undergoing the tough times, we appreciate the value of mental strength and self-development
We appreciate the value of light when we are in darkness

         It does not mean just to appreciate the value of life, one need to undergo all the troubles in life. With a little bit of awareness, gratitude and balanced approach, we can appreciate everything that happens in our life.