How leaders create a conducive environment for achievement orientation among people?

 How leaders create a conducive environment for achievement orientation among people? 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

 

Last week, we discussed how an environment affects the individual in terms of his/ her thought process towards achievement orientation like “to be successful” or “not to be failed.”

Now, in an organizational setup, let us understand how influential managers/leaders create a conducive environment for his/her team towards achievement orientation.

As I observed, some of the effective managers/leaders have some typical working style patterns. They ensured that they are pushing the team towards achievement orientation by inculcating some of the following habits at the self-level or the organizational level.

                                           
 
Making the expectation clear:

First, leader/manager BRINGS CLARITY what they want and from whom they want it. They set the expectation clear among the team. When they are certain about what they want, from whom they expect, they become much focussed. When they communicate the expectation to other people, the other people are also working without any ambiguity. Only when the people have a dilemma about the direction, they slow down the execution speed, decision-making capability. When people know what is expected out of them, it puts them in the right direction.
 
Leaders ensure this first step by bringing role clarity, setting the targets and deployment to the right people,

Establishing a communication forum:

Once the expectation is set, the next thing an effective manager/ leader ensures that establishing communication forums for two-way communication. The communication forum is mainly for being in reality by everyone on the task. The communication forum could be exchanging information through various electronic channels on a fixed time interval or meeting face to face to review the progress. The advantage of establishing a communication forum is to get convinced about progress and ensure that all are on the same page.

Facilitation and feedback:

The next step is the leader believes more in facilitation than commanding to help the people arrive at the right solutions approach or right decisions as facilitation helps the people think and move confidently than in giving instruction mode. The advantage of facilitation is that the leader/manager's presence is not required when the people face a similar challenge. People learned to think from the leader/ manager's perspective.

Recognizing: 

This is one of the steps most people ignore or not giving much importance due to various reasons. That is, to recognize or appreciate the people for the effort and the result. Recognizing the work will reinforce the positiveness in the people's minds, which will help them replicate next time.

In a corporate environment, it is always a debate whether to appreciate the effort or the result. As I observed, most effective leaders recognize the people’s effort first, and then they concern about the result. They believe that eventually, the result would come once the effort is put in the right direction.
 
When we create an ecosystem, as mentioned above, with varying intensity levels depending on the task or complication of the task, people also orient themselves to achieve.

Environment triggers the behavior, and it is the primary responsibility of the manager /leader to create a conducive environment.!

How environment affects achievement orientation?

 How environment affects achievement orientation?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we discussed the first two factors on achievement orientation viz Values and Purpose, the third factor which impacts achievement orientation is the Environment.

The environment is where and with whom we spend most of our time, that could be our internal family members, colleagues, friends, and externally to some extent, the society.

How the internal environment impacts us towards achievement orientation?

Since we spend more time with family, friends, and professional networks, they influence our thought process towards achievement orientation. That thought process triggers our ability to take risks, confidence, and courage to manage the challenges during the execution of any tasks.
 
For example,
Imagine that you are proposing a new venture to your internal environmental members. The next step in your venture is predominately determined by the kind of response or reactions you receive from your close circles. That could be an encouraging response or show stopper kind of response.

The environment is primarily influencing your thought process in the following aspects.

Should i focus more on " to be successful " or " not to be failed"?

Even though both focus approaches seem to be the same, there is a subtle difference in how we deal with the achievement task.

When we have a "success" orientation, most of the time, we look for LEARNING  in each step and always look at the experience (either pass or fail) as a learning opportunity. That approach would put us at a high energy level.

When we orient towards “not to fail,” our inclination would be more rigid, always try to be smarter than others, and that approach leads us to a high anxiety level.
 
The environment predominately determines our approach.

Practically, as an individual, we have limited choice on selecting the environment circle, however, we can be conscious about our responses and our thought process towards achievement orientation.

How can a leader in the organization build a conducive environment for achievement orientations among people?

Let us discuss it next week!

How can a leader inculcate the purpose?

 How can a leader inculcate the purpose?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have discussed the importance and method of creating PURPOSE at an individual level, let us discuss how effective leaders are inculcating the PURPOSE to the organization's employees.

As an individual, the benefit of knowing the purpose is to elevate our energy and focus on a higher cause, which will also help us navigate the challenges easily. Similarly, when the team in the organization also knows and aligns themselves on the higher purpose of the organization, the focus and interaction would be on a higher cause than isolated or distracted working.

Since people come from different values and personal needs to the organization, bringing the people together is very significant for organizational growth and internal harmony. Getting that alignment is one of the responsibilities of an effective leader.

As I observed, some of the below practices by effective leaders.
 
1.Sharing the value of the organization to the team frequently
2.Keep the team engaged with new possibilities or targets
 
Sharing the value of the organization to the team frequently:

This is one of the practices some effective leaders adopt to keep the people on an elevated level. They use to share the organizational values frequently with the team whenever they interact or through forums.
 
For example, in one of my previous organizations, the Managing director of the company frequently mentions “Trust building with the customer through service.” Eventually, when the people are exposed to the repeated value's expectation, their actions and interactions with others are also in line with their organizational values. As long as the person is working in the organization, he is bound to work with building trust with others.

Keep the team engaged with new possibilities or targets.

This is another method I had observed with some of the leaders. They engage the team by showing new possibilities or business targets. This will make the team to work on an elevated emotional level as the future possibilities eventually tap out their potential. As human beings, we are always excited to look forward to new things that we have not seen earlier.

For example, a few years back, Ratan Tata conceived the idea of the low-cost car, which no one ever thought of before. That new possibility might have created a positiveness and drive for Tata motors' internal team to work together to see it in reality.
 
The key point when you are aligned with higher-level purpose, your energy, emotions, managing the challenges, and achievement orientation would be to a higher degree. That is applicable for the individual and the organization as well.!

Some leaders are good at inculcating those purposes in the team through their consistent effort, which i think is one of the leader's primary responsibilities!
 

Identify your Strength

 Identify your Strength 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discussed some of the methods to lead a purposeful life, one of the methodologies is to know your current strength.
 
The strength could be your soft skills like communication, interpersonal talent, or management skills like problem-solving, looking at issues comprehensively, connecting the dots, or your domain knowledge and application skills like designing, marketing, engineering, etc.

The more we are aware of our strength, the better we can leverage it to lead a purposeful life. But most of us are concerning too much about the weakness and trying to fix it forever than being aware of our inherent strengths and leverage them for maximum benefits.

How can you find your strength?
 
1.First and robust process is through self-analysis, which is a lifelong exercise.
2.You can ask for feedback from others about your strength
3. Listen to what others appreciate you frequently, which you might have perceived as natural strength by you, and you might have taken it for granted.
4. Another approach is that you get an objective assessment of your strength by taking an online/ web-based assessment as conducted by Gallup. You can buy the strength finder book in which you have an access code to do the test. That will give a fair idea about your professional strength, which you can use as a base to start. (I have done this 15 year back, which gave me a reasonable level of  awareness) .

Given below the book front-page image.


 
To sum up,
you suppose to know your passion and strength to lead a purposeful life. When you are driven by purposeful activities, your emotional level, and achievement orientation would be on a higher level irrespective of any challenges during the journey.
 
Having discussed the purpose-driven by self, let us discuss how leaders can inculcate purpose to the organization's team next week.
 

How to identify your life purpose?

 How to identify your life purpose?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Having discussed the importance of knowing the purpose for being in a high energy state and achievement orientation, let us learn to identify the purpose by ourselves.
 
Through self-introspection, one can find his TRUE NORTH, and some people are fortunate enough to be aware of the purpose at a young age. Accordingly, they design their professions and life.

For others, it may take time to get clarity on the life purpose, and those need to explore it continuously if they want to make meaning out of life. That is a continuous evolution process.

Based on my experience, i have listed below some of the methods to find a purpose. 

1. Identify what you love most to do
2. Leverage your strength
3. Experimenting and exploring

Identify what you love most to do:
 
Not all people have the privilege of choosing a path that they like. Practically, we take what is given. Even in that living environment, we naturally love to do some of the activities most of the time.We will not feel losing energy even when we are doing those activities for a longer duration. That is called passionate tasks.

We need to find those passionate activities and design the significant part of life around it.

When we are doing passionate activities, our energy level would be towards achievement orientation than procrastination or excuses. 

For example,

If you find yourself enjoying more when solving technical issues through your observation, analytical, creative skills, that may be likely your passion. Ensure that most of your profession or in general life activities around that passion of solving technical challenges.

If you find yourself enjoying more when helping others solve their leadership-related problems, then teaching may be your passion and ensure the most of your life activities around teaching on life skills.

You can relate to some of the celebrities who found their passion (sports, music, journalism, entertainment) early and made a career out of it. 

The key point is when you find your real passion and design your life around the passion, you will find meaning in what you are doing. That will make you work towards achievement orientation.One of the methods is finding what you love most to do 

let us discuss other methodologies next week!

Clarity on PURPOSE (Contd..)

 Clarity on PURPOSE (Contd..) 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we have discussed the need to be aware of our purpose last week,,a few responded that the purpose would vary from time to time. For example, at a young age, money was the purpose, and later stage of life, the purpose changed to impact society. The purpose may not be the same throughout life.

That is right only and let me give my perspective on purpose with reference to time, based on my experience. 
 
a few years back,i  met a successful entrepreneur who ventured into the business at a young age, and even at 70+, he is active and involves in business decisions. When i asked about his high energy level even at this age, his response was, "when i started my entrepreneurial journey, the purpose was to make money and survive. Those purposes drove me then and met. Now my purpose is to enhance the life of my employees that motivates me now to do more" .

we can relate the above example with our life as well.

The key learnings are 

• The purpose will get change over time, depending on the maturity of individual learning and maturity.
• Today money may not be a purpose but does not mean that he ignored it. It becomes a subset of the higher purpose of providing quality life to employees.
• The purpose may vary from small /short term to high/ long term perspective. Those are all interchangeably accepted as a purpose or goal, or objective. Achieving those little/ short term goals are all very essential, and that eventually lead you to find your TRUE NORTH. Finding purpose is an evolution and time-consuming process.
• We should have some higher-level purpose to drive us, else, we will get distracted. We need to find some meaning in what we are doing, which will keep us at an elevated emotional level.

Earlier, you get your TRUE NORTH or ULTIMATE PURPOSE in life and align your actions, better you will become emotionally healthy and balanced.

Let us discuss the practical way of finding the purpose next week!

Why finding PURPOSE is essential?

 

Why finding PURPOSE is essential? (Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)   In continuation of knowing self more through getting value clarity, the next step in Achievement Orientation is to know your purpose in life. There is a saying that everyone comes to earth with a purpose, and everything happens with a purpose only. There is a school of thought from a philosophical perspective that the meaning of life to live happily or go along with the flow. It may be valid, and only a few people are aligned with that perspective and internally motivated. That is a high-level maturity of living. However, from a materialistic perspective, there is always a compelling need to be on a high level of internal motivation and achievement-orientation. One way of fulfilling the requirement is to find the life purpose at the self-level at some point in a lifetime.  Given the realm of our education, knowledge, skillset, experience, and background, we need to find the purpose of our life. The tough question that needs to be answered is," why do i exist"? what is meaningful to me? What is the real fulfillment for me? What is my identity? , what will i be remembered for, at least for some time?!!. The purpose could be anything as it depends on the individual. It could be making a difference, creating an impact on others, building wealth, solving a chronic problem, entertaining others, and so on. Finding purpose is the exploration process, and it is not a one-time activity. Why should we find our purpose? When we have clarity on the big-picture of our existence, it will give a sense of direction. When the direction is not right, how fast we move, the path does not take to the right destination. When we do not know our true north and being busy with all the distractions of life, we feel empty despite all the success. When we know our purpose, even though there are struggles, it won’t hurt much. When we do not have any clarity about our purpose, we are vulnerable to even small disappointments, rejections, failures. When we are clear about our purpose, our journey will be enjoyable even if it is slow because we are aware that we are marching in the right direction in our path. That realization makes us feel good. Optimism comes out when we are clear about our journey’s direction. Let us learn the different ways of exploring self to get clarity on our purpose next week. Given below the link to an interesting video on meaningful life/vision/purpose, you may relate them.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bumPyvzCyo

How to identify your core values?

 How to identify your core values?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Having discussed the importance of knowing our values and their influence on our behavior, actions, and decision-making speed, let us understand the step-by-step process of identifying our core values.

The identification process is iterative, and anyone can do it by themselves through analysis. It may be challenging for some people to identify by themselves, and for those, i recommend seeking help from the coaches.

Values are nothing but some of the principles we stand for or the importance or priority we give in life for most of the time. Those values will drive our behaviors, decisions, and actions on a personal and professional front.

Whether we realize it or not, each one of us has inherent values within us that are driving us every moment. We might have acquired from our parents, childhood experience, or even with current experiences. The more we are sure about our core values, it will help us make the right decisions during challenging times and emotionally healthy.
 
How to identify the values?:
 

1. Go through the list of values and identify the favorable values with which you are associating yourself frequently or the unfavorable values which you do not like to be associated with. Given below some of the lists of values, you may get more than 200 values when searching on the web. My suggestion would be not to get into the searching for a list, and you do the self-analysis, identify and label on your own as it would reflect you correctly without bias.

Favorable Values:

Growth /Love / Challenge / adventure / Pride in achievement / making difference / individuality / creativity / passion / honesty / integrity/stability / freedom / achievement / contribution / gratefulness/ courage/ expressive / fun / harmony/ power / peace/happiness/secured/ intimacy /sense of control/intelligence/ success/ sharing /giving / family/ career / money/ compassion/Loyalty/connections/commitments/Health / Nature/ relationship/ risk taking
 
Unfavorable Values:

Anger/ Guilty / Being control/ rejection / failure/ insecurity/ jealous/ sadness/ humiliation/ victimized/worry/ instability/ mediocre

2. First, choose the top 10 values you are associating with either favorable or unfavorable values, and further analyze and bring to the top 3. It would be challenging to prioritize the top 3 values. In that way only, you are clear about your values.

As said, this is an iterative process. The more you spend yourself, the more clarity on your preferences.

The awareness of your preferences, principles, or what you stand for gives more clarity to deal with life challenges. Internally, it will help you have a balanced emotional level. Also, it allows you to design your professions inline with your values.

Why is value alignment required?

 Why is value alignment required?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

In continuation of last week's discussion, the quality of work depends on the emotions we are driven to work, either pleasure or pain. In simple terms, when we like the task, the quality of work will also be better.

Similarly, from a larger life perspective, when we align what we like to do and what we do, the quality of life will be relatively good. Here, what we want or prefer, or what is important to us, is called VALUE.

When there is VALUE CONFLICT between what you like to do and what you do most of the time, it will affect personal and professional performance. It leads to suboptimal performance compared to the potential.
 
For example,

you give more importance to CREATIVITY as your value, and your work environment is not conducive for demonstrating creativity. It will create value conflict inside of you that leads to low-level emotional experience.

You may prioritize making more money in life (who does not give priority?), that is one value of you, and at the same time, you would like to give importance to being in comfort without much effort, that is also one value of you. If you have both values internally, you will be undergoing guilt as basically, both values do not align or match together.

Knowing your dominant preference in life and resolving the conflict preference of values are essential for personal and professional achievement.
 
Let us learn the structured process of identifying the core values next week.

Why should you know your VALUES?

 Why should you know your VALUES?  

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 As we discussed the VALUES as a prime step towards achievement orientation, let us understand the need to realize the value by self.

We are driven by mostly two emotions, viz happiness (pleasure) and sadness (pain). Either we want to maximize the pleasure in any activities/circumstances or minimize the pain as much as possible. The outcome of the task depends on the emotional mix of pleasure and pain.

For example,

When your boss/ colleague asks you to prepare a presentation content, you may have two choices in executing the task. If you like preparing the presentation content, you want to maximize the pleasure of the preparation process. Hence you will be striving to give your best.

If you do not like the presentation preparation task and at the same time, you do not want to lose your boss/colleague's confidence or relationship, which you perceive as painful. To avoid the pain, somehow, you complete the preparation with a half-hearted effort.

In both choices, your presentation quality is based on the emotions you are undergoing in the task, maximizing the pleasure or minimizing the pain.

Now you can relate any task or circumstances in your professional context, you will realize you are driven by those two basic emotions only.

The key point is when you are driven by the emotion of pleasure, your quality of work is excellent, and when the emotion of pain guides you, your quality of work may be substandard.

The emotion comes from your like / dislike, which i term as your PREFERENCE or INTEREST or VALUES.


 

 
Life is a series of events or circumstances, and if we ensure most of them are inline with maximizing pleasure, our effectiveness would be high.
 
We need to learn how to identify our likes/dislikes or Interests or preferences or VALUE and align life inline with VALUES.

Let us learn the process of identifying the values and their significance in the coming weeks'.