What drives people to achieve?

 What drives people to achieve?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discussed in the “Achievement Orientation  Introduction," the key challenge for every professional is motivating or keeping others in the same state?
 
You might have observed some people are always on a high energy level or highly self-motivated despite all the challenges like age, health factors. What does motivate them to be in that state?.. They are driven by their thoughts to achieve something in their profession or life.

Different schools of thought believe that people are motivated by external factors like money, a high positional status that comes from the title, and exposure. Some studies found that those external factors help to some extent to keep the person in a motivated state; eventually, the energy level is getting reduced. The pace may depend on the individual at what stage he/ she is in the lifecycle.

In one of the interviews, the interviewer asked Ratan Tata, " What drives you to do more even at this age as well? He said, " exactly i do not know, but it could be the fire inside." His rich experience reveals the truth.

Hence, what drives people is the inner desire to achieve something. That inner desire manifests externally in a different way.


How can you identify those people who are driven by inner desire?

1. They are passionate about what they are doing.
2. Eager to learn more in their passionate area
3. Most of the time restless and unhappy with the current state or status quo
4. Displaying a high level of energy in their passionate work despite any challenges

When an individual develops the inner desire or fire to achieve something, he/ she uplift self and make a positive impact on the team or in the working environment.
 
The question would be how to inculcate the inner desire? Whether it is inborn or can we develop?

In my experience, anyone can develop the achievement orientation within and with others and a structured process and practice.
 
Next week, let us discuss the holistic framework of achievement orientation, starting from creating the inner desire to achievement and dealing with the achievement challenges during the journey.

Achievement Orientation

 Achievement Orientation

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One of the emotional intelligence competencies for aspiring managers or leaders should develop “Achievement orientation.”

What is Achievement orientation?

Achievement orientation is a combination of mindset and practices to accomplish the task or moving towards achievement. It ranges from small task completion to achieving something meaningful in life as a broad context.

You might have observed some people are continuously progressing in the life journey, and some people are stagnant at some point in time. In my opinion, regardless of the field of work, environment, and external  challenges, the clear  differentiation between a highly growth-oriented person and a mediocre person is “Orientation intensity towards achievement.”

You might have experienced some of the scenarios in the professional environment.

1. Some people can get things done amidst all the challenges.
2. When you assign some tasks to someone, he/she will finish it, and your intervention or follow-ups would be relatively less.
3. Some people would complete the task due to follow-up/reminders, or the quality of work may not be up to the expectation.
4. Even at your level, you may be finding joy to do some task and, in some task, you do not find yourself enjoying. You will be wondering how to keep your motivation high all the time.

One of the challenges for  most professionals is "How to be in highly motivated level at an individual level and keep others to accomplish more?"

In this new topic on “Achievement Orientation,” let us discuss the challenges and perspectives on 

1. What motivates us to progress continuously?
2. How to be highly motivated internally?
3. How to bring the ownership feeling on others in a professional environment
4. Steps in achievement orientation and insights 

Let us discuss in the coming weeks and solicit your views.

Power of Progress or Small wins

 Power of Progress or Small wins 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

For the last 20 weeks, we have discussed the importance of channelizing the low-level emotion into a higher level and the different methods of channelizing the low-level emotions like anger, fear, frustration, sadness, and envy into productive emotions.

In all the methodologies, the common underlying factor is our awareness of the emotion and taking action to subsidize it.
 
One more effective way of being in high-level emotion at the workplace is to make small progress or small win in our core work area on a consistent basis.

Why small progress or small win is important?

Irrespective of any setbacks, everyone craves fulfillment or happiness at the end of the day. That is the emotional aspect everyone is looking forward to. One way of getting into that state is to make meaningful small progress in the work.

Generally, we can not achieve great success or milestones on all days, but we can make small steps toward milestones. In the absence of a small step or meaningful progress, we feel low.

For example, achieving a higher sales target may be the destination and that will happen only once, whereas the initiative or progress towards reaching the destination can happen every day. When you make a progress or small win every day in that direction, that improves your inner emotions.

One of the studies done by researchers indicates that when people make a little incremental progress in a meaningful way, that boosts the people's inner emotional positively. The researchers came out with the book “The progress principle”.
 
How can we achieve small progress?
 
To achieve little progress or small wins, you do not need any special occasions or reasons. You just need to be conscious about bringing incremental, progress through your effort.
 
For example, on a typical day and in your routine work, if you stimulate your team’s thought process, initiate new ideas or take a step for solving chronic issues, you may think that you have made some progress towards milestone success. That thinking will elevate your emotions. In routine work, you are making a small difference in your effort consciously.
 
The key point is the small progress or small win through your effort will offset any low-level emotions and keep you on elevated emotional level. Progress is progress, the quantum does not matter. The momentum makes you engaged and relieve you from low level emotions.
 
Just you need to be aware of making small progress or small win every day that makes you be in higher level of emotions.

Overcoming Envy (Contd..)

 Overcoming Envy

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we mentioned, some of the simple and powerful approaches to overcome envy last week. We discussed developing an abundance mindset by counting your blessings as one of the approaches. Let us discuss other approaches.
 
 

• Counting your blessings
• Setting your standard and compare
• Learn the nature of creation
• Appreciating the goodness frequently

Setting your standards and compare:
 
Envy as emotion disturbs us mainly due to comparing ourselves with others' success and scarcity mindset. To counter that state, we always need to set standards for us in terms of engagement. That could be learning new skills, taking new initiatives, or meeting new people. When we commit ourselves to many activities, our focus shifts to a new horizon rather than dwelling too much by comparing ourselves with others.

I know one of my managers cum mentors used to keep him always engaged with some activities even though his boss did not insist. He never indulged in comparing himself with any of his colleagues or even in any gossip or low-level activities. I learn from him to set a standard self and chasing the standard rather than giving yourself low-level emotions.

Also, when you have some priorities and comparing yourself against your standard, that boosts your self-worth.
 
Learn from nature:

As mentioned many times, the law of nature suggests that nothing is permanent in this world, and everything will go changes as cyclic. If you compare yourself with others, and feel about the shortcoming of the skills or the success of others, wait for your turn. When your intention is right and keeps raising your standard, you eventually get what you deserve.
 
Appreciating the goodness frequently:

When you observe any great people and their interviews, one typical pattern is the demonstration of appreciation. Recently I met a successful entrepreneur who ventured into many businesses and turned into a successful. During the discussion, someone mentioned their competitor in the conversation. The moment he heard about a particular competitor, he elaborated on their positives in some markets and appreciated them. Not even once, he said any negatives about the competitor. That is the mindset of highly successful people when they compare themselves with others.

Generally, we can appreciate others only when we operate at a higher emotional point. To counter envy emotions, we need to be conscious of our high-level emotions.
 
To sum up, envy is a most dangerous emotion than any other low-level emotion. We need to be conscious about that and choose any combination of approaches to be in a high emotional state for our own sake of well-being!

Overcoming Envy

 Overcoming Envy

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

Having discussed the causes of envy and its effect on our workplace productivity, let us discuss the approaches to deal with jealousy as an emotion.

As mentioned, there is a thin line difference when we look at others for comparison or inspiration and get envy. The consciousness is always required not to get into the envy trap. I am sharing below some of the approaches as i experienced.
 

• Counting your blessings
• Setting your standard and comparing yourself.
• Learn the nature of creation
• Appreciating the goodness frequently

Counting your blessings always:
 

Envy comes in when we have a thinking that others have something which we do not have. It is an outcome of a scarcity mindset. To counter that thinking, we need to count our blessings and the positive things we have in our lives.

For example, you may observe a colleague who has extraordinary social skills, which you may lack. Eventually, you will compare yourself and feel envy about it. To counter that, you think of your blessing, say you may be having extraordinarily analytical and problem-solving skills which others may be lacking. That is a blessing or gift you got. Think about what you have, and feel grateful for that. When we count your blessings, we become less envious of others.

Just think and recognize what you got in this life in terms of skills, personal qualities, people you surround with, exposure, and opportunities you got. Most of the time, we take things for granted, and in reality, most of the privileges we got in life are not readily available to others.

The more you think of your blessings and make it part of your personality; eventually, the less you affect by other's possession or success.

Just list down your blessings and make it a habit.

When we have not associated ourselves with the blessings, any comparison of us with others results in envy as it emerges from scarcity.

Let us discuss other approaches next week.
 

Why do we envy others?

 Why do we envy others?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One more emotion or feeling that disrupts our well-being and productiveness in the workplace is envy.

Envy is a feeling of discontent or unhappiness about other's success, advantages, or possessions.

We develop envy when we see others have something we wish to have. It could be personal qualities, skills, success, positional status, materialistic advantages, and opportunities.

for example, 

We become sad, angry, or resentful, 
when someone is getting appreciation or being noticed in the workplace
when someone is having some skills or other qualities than us
 
How is envy getting developed?
 
 One of the habits that most of us have is to compare ourselves with others. Initially, it starts with inspiration or general reference; eventually, it becomes envy. The process of comparison goes like this. We start comparing with others on skill sets, competency, possession, etc., start amazing, and then eventually looking at self, finding the gap, start feeling as inferior, becoming self-pity and weak. When we repeat the comparison habit with many people, we eventually conclude that “I do not have much positive qualities or possession, and  I am not deserving of greatness.”The self-pity becomes envy.
 
 The strange thing in the comparison process is that we compare and envy only our known circle or at the same level. For example, a rich/poor person compares him/ herself against another rich/ poor person and envy it. Most of the time, we may compare ourselves with our colleagues or friends’ level only, not on a higher level, says boss or beyond our network.
 
How does envy affect us?

Unlike other emotions, envy is something more inward and harmful than other emotions.

1) Internally, we lose our self-esteem as we always feel a scarcity/shortage of something when we keep on comparing with others. Lack of self-esteem will invite all the troubles, as we have discussed in many articles.

2) Externally, we express our emotions into rude behavior, criticizing other’s success with our own opinions

3) We lose our identity and focus of our priorities
 
Even though getting envy is a universal emotion of all human beings, which may vary with the hierarchy, we need to control with a clear borderline of inspiration and envy.

Let us discuss the approaches next week!

Overcoming frustrating moments at the workplace

 Overcoming frustrating moments at the workplace

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One of the destructing emotions in the workplace is getting frustrated, that too frequently. Getting frustration is not an issue, but being frustrated feelings for a longer time will affect the quality of work, and eventually, it affects your well-being.

 
What is meant by frustration?

It is the feeling of being upset or annoyed with someone you can not change immediately. It is an outcome of helplessness in the situation or with someone.
 
For example,

You may be easily frustrated.

When you are not recognized for your contribution/effort, and you may think your work seems to be pointless at some point in time.

When your partner or junior colleagues are not delivering to your expectation despite your  repetitive mentoring and guidance

When you are loaded with many activities and with limited resources, you may feel that you cannot cope with others' expectations or requirements.
 
In all the examples, you can observe one typical pattern: a misalignment of reality vs. expectation. That is the moment you get frustrated.
 
What will happen when we allow frustration to continue?

When we are in frustration mode for a longer time, that will manifest into anger, outburst to someone, or sometimes when you suppress, it will affect your self-esteem.
 
Dealing with frustration:

1. Realize the fact that the workplace world will not have the same alignment with your expectations. Getting disappointment sometimes is inevitable. How quickly we bounce back from frustration or channelize it to higher-level emotion is essential to learn.
2. Express it to your trusted circle :

                When you have disappointment, and you can not do anything about it, at least in the short term, you can express your feeling of frustration to someone who can understand and listen to you. When you speak and get listened to, most of the time, you are subsidizing the pain.
However, it would help if you had someone trusted, more mature than you to look at the issues from a different perspective. The trusted person can be your spouse, colleagues, or friends, mainly external to the workplace.
 
         3. Look at the frustration moments in the broad realm of life.
 
This approach is more effective in dealing with frustration. For example, if you are not given due recognition in a particular event, how will it affect your overall life? How important is it given the privileges you have in other aspects of life.? The point is when you look at your frustration moments in the realm of a larger life, the problem becomes small.

        4.Deal directly with the source:

  The last approach is to get into the dialogue with someone who made you frustrated. Some times it works.

To sum up,

Getting frustration is normal for all of us as human beings. The smartness is quickly recognizing it and channelize it through any of the above approaches rather than dwell on it for a longer duration.
 
You can not change the circumstances, which makes you frustrated, but you can channelize it if you are aware of your emotions instantly. That calls for self-awareness and enhancing your perspectives.

Dealing with Fear-Taking Action

 Dealing with Fear-Taking Action 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

Having discussed the two steps in dealing with the fear, let us understand the 3^rd step, which is more powerful in overcoming fear. That is confronting the fear through ACTION.
 
As discussed, being aware of your fear WITHIN and Knowing more about fear through enhancing perspectives all lead to half of the battle won. Real confidence comes when we take action against fear. We can not build confidence through external stimuli all the time. Absolute certainty will be made deeply at the subconscious level only by doing and experiencing through actions.
 
For example,

You may have fear about your public speaking capability. You may be aware of your inner fear and learn many public speaking techniques through various external sources like books and from others. Still, you may struggle with inner fear. You can overcome fear only when you take action by speaking in a small group.

When you speak in a small group and experience success, your subconscious mind registers the successful event. Next time, when you speak in larger groups, your mind pushes you with positive reinforcement of earlier success, and you may do well. Again, the mind registers this event as a positive reinforcement. This way only, you can overcome the fear of public speaking of any size.

The point is you are overcoming the fear only by taking action instead of stopping at the first two steps. Most of us are comfortable in the first two steps.

Similarly, in a professional environment, you may fear of new initiatives or new policies or processes in the organization. Fear is natural. The only way to manage fear is by taking action as follows.

1. Recognize it
2. Enhancing the perspectives through external sources
3. Confronting it by taking ACTION in small and extend it

The choice we have is either fearful or FACE it through ACTION.
 
If you are fearful, the fear engulfs you. When you confront it through action, you have control over fear. It is a process that requires awareness and action!

Let us discuss other disturbing emotions next week!

Have a great week, till then!

Dealing with Fear- Rationalise it.

 Dealing with Fear- Rationalise it.

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

Last two weeks, we discussed the intricacy of FEAR and the 3-step process of dealing with fear, either imaginary fear or fact-based fear.

1.Recognize 
2.Subsidize with rational thinking
3.Confront it through action
 
Having discussed step1 Recognize last week, let us understand more about step 2

Subsidize with rational thinking:

Fear is just an emotion. The emotion can be subsidized with rational thinking with datapoints s or enhancing the perspective.

For example,

you may have a fear of exposing yourself to larger audiences on public speaking. That is natural.

You can subsidize the emotions with logical input by asking yourself. 

What will happen in the worst case if I present myself?
Do i have any past experience of failure?
What was the context?
How are others doing, and what techniques are they adopting?


When you enhance your logical perspective from other's experience, books, observation, you eventually subsidize any emotional aspect, say fear. It just needs awareness and practice of looking at emotions with logical data points.
 
In one of the retailing organizations, the management wanted to bring a reform in its sales and cash management aspects. Still, they feared losing the existing customers even though the reform would help all in the long run.

How did they manage the fear?

First, the management team had recognized and admitted the fear of losing. That led to the second step.

 Second, they checked with few customers on a trial basis and also learned the best practices from the other industries, which helped them to enhance the perspectives on dealing with the fear of losing. 

Third, they implemented clear policies and communication processes to the dealers, and to their surprise, the market accepted the initiative.
 
The key learnings are that fear is emotion and natural. Eventually, it can be offset with reasoning. For which, we need to widen the perspective!

Let us discuss step 3 next week!

Till then, have a great week ahead.

Dealing with fear -Recognize it !

 Dealing with fear -Recognize it !

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Last week, we discussed FEAR and its dimension. Fear is unique to each individual, and through awareness and structured process, we can overcome some of the imaginary and fact-based fears.

In my personal experience, there is 3 step approach to deal with any fear.

• Recognize
• Subsidize with rational thinking
• Confront through Action

1.Recognize:

First, we need to be aware of the reality that we are afraid of something. This step calls for self-introspection and honest ourselves to admit the fear.

We tend to display some of the behaviors or patterns when we have Feared of something

1. Try to be a high perfectionist to avoid criticism or rejection
2. Try to procrastinate the activities by citing some reasons
3. Want to say NO but not able to do so
4. Hiding behind excessive work or social media or other distracting activities
5. Micromanaging the task of self and others

 Fear is an emotion; the individual only can identify the inherent pattern related to fear and acknowledge it. Once you recognize the pattern, you are in a position to address it.

For example, one of my clients struggled with micromanaging and was comfortable doing the task himself. During the probing process, he realized and admitted his fear of delegating the job to someone as they spoil his reputation. That moment is the turning point for transformation. The moment he recognized the fear, he was ready for the next step in dealing with the fear.

The key is to recognize the feeling of fear. 

The action point is to list down all the fear you have in all aspects of life and classify the fears like fear of rejection, failure, visibility, success, etc. Also, categorize them, whether imaginary or fact-based.That is the first step in dealing with fear, either imaginary or fact-based!

Let us discuss the other two steps next week.!