How environment triggers your behavior and action?

when I asked the following question  in my management seminar, the response would be as follows"Imagine you are in an airport. You eat the chocolate and search a dustbin to put the wrapper. However, you do not find a dustbin in a nearby area and also you hear the announcement for boarding into flight. What will you do with the chocolate wrapper when you are in airport 1 & 2 ?"

In almost the session, to my surprise, people responded  instantly as follows

In case of  AIRPORT1, I will through  the wrapper in the corner and move on, even though it is embarrassed me,

Whereas in case of AIRPORT 2, I will keep the wrapper in my pant pocket to find a dustbin later and dispose of it.What does this behavior or response indicate? 

As a human being, we create a perception about the place based on its environment ( how it is organized & cleaned, lighting, visuals, and visibility). When the environment is more appealing, it triggers positive behavior on the people and action also positive.

Alternatively, when the environment is not conducive, it triggers negative behavior and action.

It holds good for the home & organizational environment as well. When the internal organization is organized neatly, it triggers positive behavior in the people, and it would get demonstrated with timely communication, care for the people, product, and equipment,. When the workplace is not organized correctly, people working in that environment also behave negatively as not caring anything and adding further chaos in the system.

As you are the leader of your system, create a positive environment as much as possible for conducive communication, relationship, and growth. That is a responsibility of everyone who leads.

Change Environment ----Change perception ----Trigger Positive behavior

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!
 

Being proactive and cool

In personal and professional life, everyone has some primary responsibilities which can be done only by self. When we do not execute the primary responsibility on time; the consequence may be more stress or pain. Also by nature, any delayed response will consume more time and energy.For example, 

As an individual, if you are not spending time proactively on taking care of your health, any way you need to spend time when you get sick.

As a business head, If you are not spending time proactively on planning your customer orders delivery at the beginning of the month, any way you have to spend at the end of the month in firefighting mode which more stressful.

As a leader, If you are not spending time with your team on developing, mentoring and teaching the skills, any way you need to spend time when they make costly mistakes in their execution.

As a parent, If you are not spending time with your kids during  childhood on values development, any way you need to spend time in future when they slip on the life values which is more pain

The point is that proactiveness is required at least on your prime responsibilities. Else, any reactive time spending would affect the quality of life. Hence, be aware of your prime responsibility and be proactive!

Thinking of Possibilities

The first and foremost requisite for transformation either personal or business is the thinking of possibilities. That is the possibilities of change from existing level or chances of success. When we think of possibilities, then this thought process reinforces further and becomes a belief. The belief will drive your actions towards the achievement.

         For example, consider any successful people from business, sports, media, politics, etc. During early part of their life, their background was ordinary. They became successful because they believed in themselves. Before believing themselves, they think the possibilities of becoming successful or achieving something great. They believed in the possibilities of changing their destiny better than they were. That thought process only brought all the opportunities, environment to them.

           The point is to enhance your thinking towards new possibilities as a starting point for any achievement in personal and business. Possibility thinking reinforces your beliefs; in turn, drives you to take right actions!

Motivate your team with “Why.”

One of the challenges most of the managers/leaders have today is to keep the team motivated towards their work. Many factors are contributing to people motivational level, and there is no single universal solution which caters to all people’s motivation problem. One of the solutions, as a leader/manager, you can inspire the team is through your communication about their work, effort , contribution to result.

For example, the person has to be communicated why his work is important to the organization in terms his contribution to the organization’s wellness. (Instead of merely explaining his job description of what and how part)

Similarly, when you are asking for some information, you can communicate why this information helps you will motivate them to add value in their working rather than just asking for a report.
Likewise, when you are initiating any new changes, tell them why this initiative is important for them and their role on the result.

Personally, it is working well for me when I work mostly on project based environment where just dictating won’t work.
People are relatively inspired if they knew the purpose of their work and inclined to put extra effort when they know their work can add value to the others. 

Be aware your communication process by explaining WHY part and test it yourself with your team. It may initially require patience and ego aversion . Once you practice, whenever you communicate, you tend to explain with WHY part, and it likely improves the motivation level.

Your self-esteem grows through your actions

Self-esteem is all about how you feel and think about yourself as this determines your quality of life. Even though factors like your childhood, upbringing, environment influence your level of self-esteem, one of the most significant factors drives your self-esteem is your own thoughts and action. When your thought process and action are same, your self-esteem improves. Alternatively, when there is misalignment on your thoughts and actions, it affects your self-esteem.

       For example, you want to inculcate a new habit to improve your effectiveness, and you form a resolution to surf the social media contents only when you are in leisure, not during busy hours. When you are determined by this resolution and make it happen, your self-esteem goes up as your subconscious mind reinforce that you are capable of making anything happen with your persistence.

       In case, if you are not able to follow your own resolution and break the habit formation, your subconscious mind reinforce that you are weak in following up on your own resolution. When this kind of instances happen frequently, you mind convince that you are either strong or weak in following your own commitments and your self-esteem grows or pulls down.
 
      That is, our self-esteem grows or falls on our own thought process and action. This is applicable both in a personal and professional environment too as a leader. Just be aware of your thought and action alignment, raise your standard continuously and stick on it.

How do you look at your work?

Once three people were working on the bridge construction. The stranger approached the first person asked what he was doing.T he person said, “Can‘t you see I am laying stones.” The stranger quickly moved on to the second person and asked the same question.T he person replied: “I am working on my income so that I take care of myself and family.”

      The stranger moved on the third person and asked him what he was doing. The person replied with a smile “I am building a bridge, once the bridge construction is over, many people will pass on.I am helping others to move fast. This bridge will be here centuries after I am gone”    

       This is a well-known story, and the profound message is that how you are looking at your work with great purpose on it makes a difference in your quality of work and life. Irrespective of your profession, each one of us is doing our bit for the benefit of others as a whole. When we realize the purpose of our work in a big picture, the work will bring happiness and also the quality of work will be enhanced.
 
        Identify the purpose of your work!! 

How does “being punctual” help your growth?

If you observe highly successful people, you can identify one universal quality they consistently display in their life is “Being Punctual.” 

What is meant by “being punctual.”?
As we generally understood, being punctual is not only on time for any event or meetings, it is adhering to the commitments to self and others. It is a commitment to yourself towards any activities and respect for others or sensitive to other’s time.

Being punctual is all about organizing self.

It is all about your attitude towards yourself, your work and care about others. 

How this attitude does helps you?:

When you organize yourself, eventually you will get the capability to organize others

For example, when you are committed to your work and you showoff on time, that makes you calm and you can think clearly. When you are sensitive to your commitments to others, it makes you more alert .when you are in calm and alert that makes you more effective in your execution. When your execution is effective, likely you achieve success.

Alternatively, when you are not showing off on time, you demonstrate your irregularities. You are perceived as not trustworthy. Sometimes, your irregularities make you restless, anger and eventually affect your work quality. This attitude reduces your personal effectiveness and in turn growth.

Hence, Set right your attitude of “ being punctual “ and this  will accelerate your growth as we witness from achievers ! 

How to be grateful forever?

Being in a grateful state is one of the biggest virtues a person can possess. Grateful is a powerful feeling of being thankful for everything happened in life. A lot of research is being conducted for the benefit of being in the grateful and many studies show that the person with gratitude mindset will have more satisfaction, happy in life and less disturbed with life challenges.

Being in the grateful state is a natural process for a few people and difficult for some people in the world of a busy lifestyle.However, from my experience, with a little effort, the mind can be trained to look at the life with more gratitude 

How to practice gratefulness?:

1.Pick any one aspects of your life, say your education, job, family members, friends or any other opportunities you got in your business.
2.Think through how much lucky you are to have those aspects of your life. Think through the possibilities of forces which could have worked against you and how all the forces have worked out in your favor in getting those aspects.
3. When you think through deeply, your mind starts accepting your giftedness.When you do this frequently, eventually, you start looking at everything in life with gratitude mindset.

The point is that everyone has troubles and challenges, but how you look at the things with gratitude will give you strength to overcome the challenges. Being in a grateful state is possible by all with a little bit of awareness and effort!

How to change the mindset of others?

One of the frequently asked questions in most of the conversation with business head or managers is, “How to change the mindset of my team?”. Business head intends to change his fellow manager's thought process or mindset. Similarly, managers also expect to improve his fellow reportee’s thought process.It is reasonable expectation a senior person likes his team member to look at the things as he sees.

Let us understand the process of changing the mindset of others.

Mindset means we set our mind or thoughts towards something in a particular fashion and our behaviors/actions are in line with thought process or mindset. Now as an elder, if you want to change the mindset of others, you need to feed their mind with new thoughts or experience or new learning, then only old mentality disappears, and new mindset or thought process settle in. That is merely enhancing the mind to accommodate a new way of looking at things.

If you understand this process, as an elder, your job is to continuously educate or communicate with your fellow team members till they enhance their mind. You need to give a new exposure in the form of training or further learning. That way only, you can change other’s mindset towards business.

The point is that educating or communicating or exposing for new learning is your responsibility. Are you owning responsibility and spending your time, energy towards developing your team is the point of self-introspection!