Leading others-Earning Respect

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leading Others -Improving Communications 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leading others (Improving Communication)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us discuss some more communication improvement techniques next week!

Leading others(Enhancing your tolerance)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leading Others (Connecting with care)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

Leading Self (Having Faith)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The fifth and last factor to improve strengthening inner world is “Faith.”

Faith can be defined as complete confidence or belief or trust or conviction about something. That something can be unknown, no proof or evidence or not seen. However, internally, we feel the presence. The moment you think and feel about it, it would give internal strength. That is FAITH.

The faith can be entrusted on God, Nature, your capabilities, your people or your profession. It can be anything which is held on with strong conviction.

For example,

if you strongly believe and trust in your values and it will drive your life, that is faith
If you strongly believe your favorite Guru or God and it will guide you, that is faith
If you strongly believe yourself and your capabilities without any doubt, that is faith

Why do you need faith in something ?:
 
When you have undoubted faith in something, that gives positive feeling inside you and your mind accepts life challenges or face any consequences with clarity and courage.

Faith makes you stronger internally both during normal and tough times.

If you read any successful people, they have faith either on themselves or on their product/services or in the force beyond their imagination, say divine power.

Just answer yourself on which you have faith? How strong is it? Make it stronger and hold it or surrender yourself to that faith, eventually, you become stronger, and your leadership capability will also become stronger!