Showing posts with label Success. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Success. Show all posts

Thursday 23 July 2020

Dealing with Anger

Dealing with Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 
As we outlined the importance of channelizing each emotion for positive turnout in the workplace and each emotion needs different strategies, now let us understand more about dealing with anger as an emotion.
 
When do we get angry at the workplace?

Most of the time, we do get angry when things are not going as we expect. Typically, the following are some of the scenarios we lose coolness or normal state and get into the agonized mood.
  1. When someone repeatedly says something against our views, and we are in a situation neither to accept others' opinions nor in a position to convince others to our views.
  2. When someone is pointing us for fault with or without logic, and we are in a position not to accept our failure openly. Also, not in a position to defend our case.
  3. When we have higher expectations or standards on something or someone and, in reality, when we face less than expectation or standard, suddenly, the anger burst out.
You can think and relate some of your experiences where you get the anger.

In all the above situations, you can see some typical patterns as follows.

1.NON -ACCEPTANCE of the reality in a particular moment
2.Our INABILITY or lack of courage and skill to face (Helplessness)
3.Lack of patience to get the full picture

 
The internal pattern manifests outside either by way of shouting or abusing or hitting physically or going out of self-control.

Whether anger is bad all the times?
 
Anger is one of the natural emotions, and we can not outrightly say it is wrong. The anger becomes worthless only when it is used for silly reasons with the inappropriate people.

When anger is used for higher purposes with the right people, it turns out to be positive and the right people also perceive it in a proper perspective.

One of the best examples of converting the anger into the positive turnout would be Mahatma Gandhi's life as we read when he faced the humiliation by the British which turned out as anger. Instead of directing the anger to give it back either by way of verbal or physical violence against the British, he channelized the anger into a nonviolent momentum and created a new history.
 
When we read such a historical incident, we move on as extraordinary incidents.

But in a  day to day life, some effective people are good at channelizing their anger into a positive experience and let us discuss those real examples next week.!

(Appreciate your personal experience of how the anger impacts you at the workplace!)

 

Monday 6 July 2020

Aware of Life Balancing

Aware of Life Balancing
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 
As we are discussing the importance of self-awareness in managing emotions, one more methodology of self-awareness is to be aware of your balancing status in all aspects of life.

Some people list up to 24 aspects of life. To simplify it, i classify the life aspects into six areas like professional growth, relationship, health, wealth, maturity, and social contribution, as shown in the below radar chart. We should progress in all aspects at the same pace. That is  Life balancing.

When you measure the current balancing profile status in each aspect, you become aware of improvement areas.


                                           
You can do self-assessment in each aspect and see yourself about balancing profile.

For example,

on professional growth, considering your education, experience, if you feel, you have grown in the professional front in terms of contribution, monetary benefits, and social status, rate yourself on the higher side and vice versa.

Similarly, on the health front, rate yourself depending upon your health conditions.

On wealth aspects, rate yourself on your capability on earning, saving, investment, and spending aspects. On relationship aspects, you can measure your relationship quality with your circle.

Likewise, in all the categories, do the self-assessment and measure your balancing aspects. If you find some imbalanced profile, that will give you awareness of the focus area.

When i administer this assessment in my workshop, the result brings eye-opening experience for the participants as i think this is one of the powerful self-awareness tools for self-awareness.

The point is self-awareness is the starting point for all emotional management in the professional environment.

More you are aware of yourself in terms of values, beliefs, strengths, areas for improvement, purpose, organizing self, better you are on emotional management.

Let us discuss more on channelizing the emotions in next week. 

Wednesday 17 June 2020

Power of belief on emotions

Power of belief on emotions  
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)


 
As we are learning some of the ways to be more aware of self, let us understand the power of beliefs and values in shaping our personality and in managing our emotions at the workplace.

What is meant by belief?

Beliefs are the assumptions that we make about ourselves, about others and the world. There is no truth in that, it is not a fact, but we tend to believe it true. That is strange about the belief systems.

For example, some of us believe that some numbers are lucky nos. Say No 7. There is no logic, no fact, but we believe in that. That belief drives us to choose our vehicle no ending with 7 or choosing mobile no end with 7 and so on…. That belief comes from coincidental or experiences on many occasions, and we use to believe that is true. Those beliefs are driving us towards appropriate emotions and actions which propel for growth or limits from the growth.

Some of the  examples of beliefs we may have

More money, more fun
More money, more trouble
Meetings are wasting of time
My team will do anything for me
My team will never do anything without my follow-up
My intuition is always right
I am more productive in the late evening work
I will have stomach pain on Monday morning!


All the above may not be fact, but we believe it as truth.

How does belief impact our emotions and actions?

Whether the belief may be empowered or limited, it is impacting our emotions and actions.

For example,

I know one business head who firmly believes that his product quality is superior to competitors, and his business is surviving only because of quality. That is his belief, whether empowering or limiting belief does not matter. How this belief drives his emotions and actions is that he will never tolerate any people’s behavior, which is affecting the quality, and he never hesitates to invest for the sake of enhancing quality. That way, his belief is positively driving his emotions and actions. The customer is happy to work with him.

Another example is one manager strongly believes that he is the only person who can do his functional activity with perfection, and he also believes that his team members are not that much capable of executing well. Because of the belief, he uses to do all the job by himself and rarely he delegates. Even after delegation, if he finds poor execution, he loses his temper and creates havoc in the workplace. People try to avoid him.

In both examples, the underlying cause behind the behavior or action is the BELIEF.

The point is whether the belief is empowered or limited; it drives our emotions and behavior. We need to be aware of our own beliefs and able to classify whether it is empowering or limiting us.

Your awareness will help to take action to strengthen empowering belief or to eliminate limiting belief.
 
Action :

Just write down your beliefs you are holding about yourself, family, team, profession, or your business and be aware of its nature, whether empowering you or limiting you!

That is the starting point to manage the emotions in the workplace
.
Let us discuss more on beliefs and values next week

Tuesday 26 May 2020

Self Awareness

Self Awareness
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
The first step in improving emotional intelligence at the workplace is self-awareness. Self-awareness is more of knowing self in terms of strengths, limitations, beliefs, values, purpose, passion, and feelings/ emotions at a deeper level.
 
Why is Self-awareness required?

When we are aware of ourselves, we choose the right field to play to win and be prepared to improve.

Let me give you some real examples which will bring more understanding about the power of self-awareness in personal and professional growth.

1. One of my known business heads realized that he frequently stuck in a meeting and not able to ask the questions to his team. That is the moment of self-awareness of his limitation. After realizing that, he has been consciously learning the art of questioning in different circumstances.
2. One of my colleagues who was working as a senior manager identified his strength lies in people management than in detailed engineering. That moment of realization made him shift into a general management area and been successful for the last decade.
3. One of my friends recently identified his limitations in dealing with the online webinar format of learning, particularly on listening ability and coping up. Now he is working on improving the listening capability as suggested to him.
4. Personally, when i became aware of my limitations on my writing skill without grammatical errors, now I am using grammatical software to improve the writing quality and still working on it.
 
The real problem is not with the strengths or limitations, but not aware of those strengths/ limitations and leading a suboptimal life with suffering self and others.
When you know more about yourselves, it will improve your leadership effectiveness and relationship qualities.

But the strange fact is that most of us think that we know about ourselves very well. That is not TRUE. One of the studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers among the leaders of many organizations found that only 15 % of the people are aware of themselves very well and remaining either overestimated or underestimated themselves.

When I was working in an organization, as part of the leadership development process, the HR team asked me to rate myself on some of the leadership attributes. Also, they asked my peers and junior colleagues to rate me on the same attributes. To my surprise, in all the attributes, I have rated high about myself than others. That is a blindspot. That is the moment of self-awareness about myself.

We will learn the structured way of knowing ourselves in the coming weeks, and 
as of now, to get an overview of your judgment about yourself, suggest you take the following action this week.

 

 quick action on self-awareness 
  • Reach out 3 people who are very close to you and know more about you. They can be your partner, colleagues  &  friends.
  • Ask them to give feedback on TOP 3 POSITIVE qualities of you and TOP  3 AREAS OF LIMITATIONS of you as they feel.
  • Summarise the responses and calibrate yourself on what do you think about yourself and others' feedback are matching or not.



Pl do not get into justification or defend. Just be aware of yourself.
 
Self-awareness is the first step in improving your emotional stability and leadership qualities.

 

Monday 4 May 2020

Why is emotional management required in the workplace?

Why is emotional management required in the workplace?
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
Emotional management at work is all about managing your emotions or feelings within yourself, expressing well, understanding other's emotions, regulating your response in line with both yours and others.

When we learn to master the emotions through awareness and practices, it brings the following personal and professional benefits.
 
  1. Being in a peaceful state  
  2. Feeling complete
  3. Being productive
  4. Taking timely and right decisions
  5. Enabling growth in the profession
  6. Nurturing a good relationship with others 
 For example, you might have seen some people who are qualified with educations and technical/functional skills (IQ), but not being happy inside, not achieved much growth in the profession and not sought after person. But some people without much educational qualification, low intelligence on technical/functional aspects are living a fulfilled life, having a good relationship with others and consistently grown in professions. The main reason for the contradiction is emotional intelligence (EQ) or emotional management skill only.
 
Even at the business level, some business is quite successful and grown consistently because the leaders are good at managing the emotions well at self-level and managing the people's feelings very well. People could be employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Most of the organizational problems are related to people management only. The executive leaders who are good at managing the people well can drive the business results also very well. That calls for effective emotional management skills.

What is meant by emotions?

Psychologists suggest the six dominant emotions that we are experiencing most of the time, namely happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Under each, there may be many sub-elements.

When we manage those emotions very well in terms of recognizing and expressing, we become a better person in dealing with emotions.

For example,

one of your teammates prepared a presentation which you suppose to present it to your customer. You are happy with the presentation quality. The way you are recognizing your emotions at the moment and expressing with others will have a consequence on your quality of self and relationship. Let us discuss the various scenario next week that will give you the idea of our emotional management.

Learning Emotional Intelligence

Some time back, i requested feedback on the topic to be discussed for our personal and professional growth. Some have expressed  the requirements indirectly the struggles they have at a personal level and the workplace as follows
  • dealing with the decision dilemma
  • managing the boss and the colleagues
  • how do we know we are on the right path?
  • developing charisma
  • improving interpersonal skill
  • managing the conflict and difficult people
  • overcoming stress
When we observe all the struggles, most of them are related to emotional management only.

Emotional management can be defined as the ability to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and others to make effective decisions.

When we are aware of ourselves in terms of our values, beliefs, strengths, areas of improvement, and if we learn to know how to deal with the emotions of others, we can become a better person. That awareness brings the ability to manage all the challenges in the workplace.
 
 For the last 30 years, the modern business world packaged emotions related aspects into a new theory, termed as Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient and a lot of researches and books have been written on that subject. When we go in-depth of those theories and researches, one after study either supports or counters previous findings, and some of them are not considering cultural differences.

One thing I had realized that reasonable emotional management is already in our culture as we encourage more family systems and our ancient mythologies also insist upon emotional management. The Bhagavat Gita starts with the emotional conflict of Arjuna, and Krishna taught more to bring emotional stability as part of his teachings.
 
Hence, we need a holistic approach to look at our personal and organizational challenges in dealing with emotions from our culture, a combination of emotions, and a spiritual perspective. Also, to bring a transformation at an individual level on emotion management, just theory alone is not sufficient, we need to experiment, and self-realization is required.
 
With that context only, we are going to discuss "Emotional Management for Personal and Professional Growth" in the coming weeks with an in-depth explanation of some of the concepts, real-life examples, small actions, and sharing the personal experiences. We focus more on our discussions with reference to workplace challenges only.
 
Given below the broad area of coverage.
 
  • Knowing self – Strengths / Values / Beliefs / purpose /balancing in all aspects of life
  • Controlling and Managing our emotions for positive turnout
  • Achievement drive – self-motivation/ finding passion/ taking responsibility / being in energetic mode / Looking at the work and people from a karma perspective
  • Managing Others – background/understanding and  sensitizing emotions  /developing others
  • Leveraging relationship to achieve results – Leading change / Influencing / Building Team/ Improving communication
 
Look forward to your views and sharing your experiences.

Tuesday 10 March 2020

Big picture Thinking

Big picture Thinking 


One of the qualities of competent people is the ability to have “Big picture thinking or perspective” in any circumstances.

What is meant by Big picture thinking or perspective?

A big picture perspective is looking at any interaction or event or opportunities from a higher, broader angle view to get the holistic idea rather than immediately getting into details.

For example, when you fly over your city on a flight, you able to view the entire city. You may be able to look at high rise buildings, rivers, roads, flyovers, and so on. This holistic view is possible only when you are at an elevated level, say at higher feet from the ground.

Similarly, in personal and professional life, when you look at any events, incidences, conversations from a higher-level view, you will get a holistic idea about opportunities, growth potentials, and other benefits. The key is elevating yourself at a higher level or distant yourself emotionally and look at the things.

Suppose your boss is asking you to take additional responsibility as being aware of your potential. If you are a big picture thinking oriented person, you will be immediately thinking about learning opportunities, future growth prospects, exposure, and so on. Else, immediately you will be worrying about too much about the unfamiliarity of the job and refuse to accept or getting into a conversation on monetary benefits, working hours flexibility, and so on.
 
The point is not to get into the details, but how you are distant yourself emotionally, elevating yourself to look at a higher and wider level helps you to get a holistic view. Once you see the comprehensive picture, your mind is ready to take on any challenges on the micro-level. This mind shift only provides the path for growth.

Now the question maybe
  1. As a leader, how can I develop my people to get into big picture thinking?
  2. As an individual, how can I develop my thinking process?
  3. When can we shift from the big picture to detailing and vice versa
Let us discuss it next week!

Wednesday 5 February 2020

Managing Changes- Is change good or bad?

Is change good or bad?



As discussed last week, change is a continuous event in life, and we need to master the emotional aspects of the transition process.

In personal and professional life, most of us encounter the following changes.

  •   Relocating to a new place
  •   Changing job from one organization to another
  •   Change of boss 
  •   Shift in career 
  •   From the audience to the active presenter to knowledgeable group
  •   From employee to self-employed
  •   From individual contributor to people manager
  •   Learning a new skill to improve professional growth
  •   Being a bachelor to married 
  •   When an unexpected event happened from our plan 

When you look at the list above, some of the changes are imposed on us by the circumstances or by others and some of the changes we initiate on our own.

For example, relocating to a new place is a change that might have occurred due to others or by our own decision.

Depending on the nature of the change and the inward or outward momentum, the transition process creates different emotional turbulence inside.

Is change good or bad?

Most of the time, the change brings progress only, either in terms of comfort, wellness, material prosperity, or mental maturity.

For example, one of my known friends was asked to relocate to different geography of the same company, without much change in the positional, materialistic, job profile. But the change in a location exposed the friend to the new experience of handling people in different geography and helped him to accelerate the career at a later stage. 

When you relate to the changes in your life, you also will conclude that most of the changes brought good things in your life.

Having benefitted from the changes most of the time, but why do we initially resist the change?

Let us discuss it next week!

Have a great week until then! 

Managing Changes


 
Throughout life, one thing is continuously happening to every one of us  “change.”

The change is either triggered by external factors or our self-drive. Whether the change is internal or external driven, the process of transition is mostly painful. The pain is not due to specific CHANGE event, but due to the TRANSITION  process, which we undergo internally.

What is meant by change?

Moving from existing, comfort state  to new, unknown perceived discomfort zone



In between moving from a comfort state and settling down in a new state, we undergo a psychological transition process.
 
For example,

You are informed that a new boss is going to head to your organization. The moment you get the information, you may undergo internally mix up of emotional reactions and thought process like

Whether the new boss is comfortable to work? (doubt)
What will be his / her expectation, will we meet his / her expectations? (anxiety)
Will there be any change in my job profile or growth aspects? (fear)
 
Likewise, there are many changes for which we undergo different emotional reactions depending upon the nature of change.

When we do not know to manage the emotional transition process, we become a victim of the change event, and eventually, we lose the growth potential.

There are many books had been written on change management from an organizational perspective. In my opinion, we need to learn the process of transition from a personal perspective. If we are aware of the process, then as a manager or leader, one can drive the change management quickly at an organizational level as well.

Hence, we need to be aware of the change management process on the following
  • Change management  process and the emotional aspects in each stage
  • Knowing to manage the emotions at each stage
  • Some insights of changes to our quality of life
  • How can you proactively initiate some of the changes internally driven?
  • Leadership role in managing the changes smoothly in an organizational setup
 Let us discuss next week and solicit your views!

You can delegate a task, not accountability!

You can delegate a task, not accountability!
 
One of the responses for last week's discussion on delegation skill is “After I delegate the task to my colleague or team member and if he/ she does not execute the task as expected, how can I be responsible?”.

We need to understand the difference between responsibility and accountability. Accountability is someone ultimately accountable for RESULT, whereas Responsibility is someone responsible for the EFFORT or PROCESS.

Accountability is outcome-based; responsibility is process-based.

In an organizational context, when you are delegating some tasks to someone, you are just partially offloading your task to someone with empowerment to complete the task. Still, ultimately you are accountable for the result of the task. You cannot pass the ownership of the result to others. That is why we need to understand that delegation is not just the allocation of duty to others.

Effective delegation is a combination of
 
Knowing what to delegate+ To whom to delegate+ Education+ Guiding

For example, as production in charge, you are just delegating the task to your reports, but you are accountable for the delivery and not your team. You are delegating the responsibility only, not accountability. Finally, you are accountable for your team’s performance.

We need to understand that the art of delegation itself is a responsibility, not just outsourcing the task to someone. When we own that responsibility, we become master the art of delegation skill!

Developing delegation skill -Logical part of delegation

Developing delegation skill


As we discussed last week on the beliefs and fears holding us from delegating the task, let us understand the logical part of the delegation.

I mentioned my senior and his outstanding delegation skill. I observed the typical pattern in his delegation approach, and that made him good at delegating and completion of the task on time.

Whenever any new organizational tasks come across through him, he used to plan to whom to delegate. Once he identified the right person, he thoroughly explained the importance of the task responsibility, things to be done, and clarified all the doubts to the teammate. While his teammate was executing the job, the senior person regularly used to check about the progress and guide the teammate. Once the task was over, he used to personally thank the person as if the job was his own task.

It looks like the senior person applied a common-sense approach, and it was proven right most of the time, as I observed. He used to be very cool, good in time management, and above all, the team enjoyed to work with him, and I attribute the result due to his structured delegation methodology.
 
The logical approach in successful delegation is as follows
  • First, determine whether the task is to be delegated or to be done by self-based on priority and competence.
  • Identify the right person in the organization/function by mentally calculating the capability, work distribution, and other priorities.
  • Without an ego, explain the person about the task and educate the execution methodology
  • Periodically monitor and guide the people during execution to give confidence and moral support
  • Acknowledge the people’s contribution
 For effective delegation skills, we need to be aware of the emotional and logical part and practice it!

pl listen what Richard Branson's view about delegation 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTq5KhImmtc

Thursday 2 January 2020

Developing delegation skill

Developing delegation skill
One of the leadership traits is effective delegation, and it is one of the undervalued skills in the organization. Most of the managers and leaders aware that they are doing most of the work on themselves, and it affects their quality of work, time, and eventually growth; however, some factors are pulling us down from delegation.

Factors that  prevent us from delegating  
  • Believing that self is perfect and only self can do the task
  • Lack of patience to teach the work to others
  • Fear of losing the importance in the workplace if someone also does the task
  • Enjoying more of doing the routine, familiar job and not making an attempt to learn a new skill or doing something non-familiar task for growth
  •  Really not knowing the prioritization regarding the position as discussed last week.

Whatever may be the reason which prevents us from the delegation, with a lit bit of awareness on our mindset and knowing the methodology of delegation, anyone can improve his / her delegation skill. It is an art and science.

Personally, I worked with one of the senior person in the organization hierarchy, who is competent at managing time; he used to come on time and leave the office on time in a culture where most of the people start late and stay late in the evening. One of the skills he possesses is excellent delegation skills, and that could be the reason he uses to be cool, enjoys his personal and professional life than his colleagues. His methodology of delegation is worth to mention.

 Let us discuss the methodology of delegation next week!!

Prioritizing task- accountability vs. responsibility

Prioritizing task- accountability vs. responsibility

One of the questions most of the managers use to ask “I have many tasks to perform in a day, how to prioritize? They are smart people and are already practicing the discipline of having a “To do checklist.” However, they left the office with the feeling of Incompleteness.

The feeling of incompleteness arises due to being busy with many tasks, but not much impact on growth. The solution is to prioritize the job based on accountability and responsibility basis.

Should the individual introspect and answer, “am I predominately doing on “my accountable task” or “my responsibility task”?

Am I doing justification for my position by doing those tasks predominately?

The above question will enable the individual to prioritize well.

For example, if you are a CEO or business head, your accountability is to ensure business profitability, stability, and growth. Your predominate task must be in line with your accountability. That is prioritization. Suppose if you do most of the activities which you claim as you are responsible, like chasing the production targets, microanalysis on your subordinate’s job, updating the customers on despatch status, then you are not prioritizing your tasks. Even though you are responsible for some of the activities which you can delegate.

Similarly, as supply chain head, one of your accountabilities is to ensure cost optimization, and you only can do that, that is, prioritization for you. The other responsibility tasks like signing every purchase order, followup with vendors, etc. can be delegated.

The key for prioritization is that we need clarity on our accountability and responsibility. Then need to learn to delegate the responsibility task to others. The clarity will enable you to prioritize your job.

However, there is some reservation on delegating the task, and we will discuss it next week!

Saturday 21 December 2019

Be aware of your time wasters



One of the queries most of us have internally is “how to utilize the time effectively “and simultaneously work on as pulled by external distractions and factors without much conscious about the time spending pattern. However, a few productive people are good at managing time and accomplish most in the given time.
 
The first step towards to utilize the time effectively is to understand your habit pattern and the time loss associated with it. Once you are aware of your losses, you are convinced to take corrective action.
 
Without awareness, any time management tools and apps are not going to be useful.
 
One of the simple and powerful ways to be aware of time spending patterns is to track and record your activity for every hour minimum for a week. When you analyze the data, you will get a pattern of your work spending in the category like traveling to the office, spending time in the meeting, communication with the team, social media, and so on. Also, you will get a new insight into time-wasters or the activities which are not helping your personal and professional growth.
 
When I did this exercise recently, I got an insight into my habits, which are time wasters and the lifestyle which consumes most of my time without adding value to my growth.
 
I believe that this awareness is the first step towards effective time management. Suggest you do the analysis for a week and be aware of your time wasters if you want to utilize the time effectively.

Thursday 28 November 2019

Developing Influencing skill

Improving communication in the workplace
Developing Influencing skill 
 
One of the effective way to improve overall communication and harmony in the workplace is by influencing others to get things done. 
 
What is influencing?
 
Influencing is the power to change or direct someone without directly forcing them to do. It is more of impacting others positively with your personality and communication process.

For example,

When you are proposing or initiating an improvement idea in your organization, and when you express it to others,  it is accepted and implemented by others. People may or may not be reporting to you, yet they are convinced to proceed based on your communication methods, respect, and trust. They make it happen as if they are not forced to do it, but it happens on their willingness. That is influencing.

The communication method could be explaining the purpose, listening , respecting the views and convincing.

Why do influencing skills need to be learned?

When you grow up on the career ladder, your success depends on how you are getting things done across functions apart from your domain or functions. Commanding will not help beyond some level and only influencing help.

Also, young generations come up smarter than you, and they like to work with influencing personality than the controller.
 
Factors that help to become an influencer in the workplace
 
Expertise in your chosen  domain
Respect and listening
Being assertive than aggressive or passive
Gaining trust and respect through your character and competency
Provoke others with questions and change the perception
Purposeful communication
Focusing more on the solution than problem or  arguments


 The point is when you learn to influence others to get things done, you also enjoy the work and the people are also enjoying to work with you. Hence, worth to invest in developing the influencing skill!