Where is your eye-contact?

Few weeks ago, I had been to a Business school to meet someone and I had to wait for some time. May be it was quite a long time. However I had an opportunity to make an interesting observation. There was a Faculty who was busy looking at something in his smart phone.  He was approached by a student who was giving him some updates and the faculty was responding back to him without taking his eyes off his phone. This conversation was going on for about 5 minutes and the student was trying his best to strike a decent two way conversation.  He was moving from the Faculty’s left side to right and then right side to left but he was not successful.

I was hoping that he would look at his student at least a couple of times. But it did not happen and he never failed to take his eyes off his phone. May be the faculty was looking at something very important and even in that case, taking a few minutes off to talk to the students should not have been a problem. Or the student could have been asked to wait or meet after some time.

Nowadays, a scenario like this is not uncommon. Thanks to the smart phones. However, when I observed this as a third person, it did occur to me that we also miss this basic thing at Workplace or even in our family and I wanted to share my thoughts on this.

Points to ponder.

# What if the faculty were to be speaking to his colleague instead of his student? There is a good chance that he could take his eyes off his phone. What if his principle is talking to him? The only thing he will do is to look at his principle, not his phone.

The same thing is applicable to our Workplace too, ie., if you were to be checking something in your phone, whether you would have an eye contact or not?  The chances are less if it’s your team member or a colleague and if it’s your boss, you will not look at your phone. 

The point is, with or without our knowledge, we treat people based on their hierarchy.  But if we want to build good rapport and working relationship, we need to treat all equally, not based on the hierarchy.

# Let us say, you are talking to a Doctor and he is busy looking at his phone or laptop.  However, he nods and acknowledges to whatever you say and then end of your conversation, he gives you a prescription. What would you feel in this situation?

1. First thing is, you would feel disrespected since he did not care to look at you.  After all, you are paying him for your consulting time and you would expect him to look at you, not his phone.

2) You would not have confidence in the prescription since you would not be sure if he has really understood what you said.

3) Your chances of going to him again or referring him is nil.

I think, this would be applicable to any relationship where the conversation is taking place without eye-contact.

This one is for the “smart-communicators”, just on the lighter side.

Looking at your laptop/smartphone while talking to other is wrong.

Speaking to other while looking at your phone/laptop is also wrong.

Let us have an eye-contact while talking to others, be your team member or boss or anyone.  That is the basic thing in any inter-personal relationship to show our genuineness, respect and care, be it professional or personal.

So let us keep an eye on our eye-contact..

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO

Have you slept enough?

All of us want to grow and we want to grow fast and faster.  It would not be exaggerating to say that we live in an impatient world wherein we want things to happen fast and show less tolerance for delays. In a way, it’s good and can be taken for achievement and result orientation. That’s the kind of people that you would want to have in your team. Go-getters.

But do we really have habits that compliment what we want to achieve in our life?

One of such habits that I want to talk about is sleeping, sleeping enough and sleeping enough every day. I remember to have read a research article that says that that on an average at least 8 hours of sleep is a must.  I mean per day.

That’s how our bio-logical clocks work and it needs to be respected. When we sleep less, we violate this principle and we do it repeatedly, it starts hurting our systems. The research says that, when we deprive ourselves of enough sleep, it can really take a toll on our focus, concentration, thinking and analytical ability. To give an analogy, I think what fuel is to vehicles, sleep is to human beings.  Even if you were to have a superfast sports car, without fuel, it cannot move a bit. Similarly, lack of sleep does really take a toll on our performance at workplace.

So, it’s clear how important sleep is.. Do we sleep enough?

The answer is certainly NOT YES.

Habits that kill our basic habit of sleeping on time

There is only one habit that I want to talk about here.

Social media.

One habit that kills peoples sleeping pattern is social media. To give an example, in what’s up last seen status is populated.  When I send messages in what’s up, for many, I see the “last seen” status till late nights or an hour or two past 12.00 pm in the night.  I am sure you would agree with me on this and if no, do check the last seen status, next time you send a message to someone in your friends list.  I am not really sure if all these messages that we receive and send could be such urgent messages for us to be awake till midnight. I think it’s more of a habitual thing than the criticality of the messages being exchanged since in almost all the cases, all these messages can wait till tomorrow.

Similarly, the Facebook fever seem to have caught up with everyone.  With so many friends, acquaintances, friends’ friends and so many others on our friends list, there are endless updates. It’s just not that. I see updates being posted in the late nights. The updates includes selfies and it looks like almost everyone has a “selfie-fever”.  

BTW, the research findings by American psychiatric association confirm “selfie” is a kind of mental disorder and the severity of the disorder is classified based on the no. of selfies being taken and posted per day on social medias as detailed below. I guess you must find this interesting. (Source:https://adobochronicles.com)

Borderline selfitis : taking photos of one’s self at least three times a day but not posting them on social media.

Acute selfitis: taking photos of one’s self at least three times a day and posting each of the photos on social media.

Chronic selfitis: Uncontrollable urge to take photos of one’s self  round the clock and posting the photos on social media more than six times a day.

So the easy inference is people do not go to bed early and they sleep for a lesser time. The quality of sleep suffers too.

Rules to follow to get your basic habit – sleeping – right.

# Decide on a time before which you want to go to sleep. It cannot be late night. Do ensure that you get to sleep for minimum of 8 hours.

# Do a reverse planning from the above time and prioritize what you want to do before doing to bed ie, What do you really want to do and how much time you want to spend on each of those activities, what do you want to remove from your list etc., For example, Narayana Murthy and his spouse decided to not have a Television at their home when their kids were growing up.  They did not want to spend any time watching TV and rather they wanted to spend all that time with their growing children.

# Switch off the internet in your phone and Keep your smart phone away after a particular time after which you decide to not check your phone.

#If you are not able to stop your smart phone usage rule, you are addicted to your phone. So every time, you flout your own rule, do note down somewhere and review every week. You will know how severe your addiction is and take a call on how strictly you should stick to your own rules.

# This exercise is certainly required since we are flooded with too many choices. If we don’t do it, we will not be spending our time fruitfully. We would rather be wasting our time.

# Remember, Big things in life are made up of small things only.  Sleeping is one such small habit for bigger results in your life.

# Habits die hard.  However it’s certainly possible to make changes.

To conclude, we are not robots that can go on working or doing something. We are after all human beings and need good amount of sleep to start the day as a new day.  Sleeping enough keep your alert and focused. It can help keep you on your feet. It keeps your thinking and analytical abilities agile at workplace. Do try it for a week and see the improvement for yourself.

So Have you slept “enough” for the day?  

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO

What is the cost of your mistake?

It was 29^th June and when I got up in the morning, I reminded myself more than couple of times that, unlike the last month, I was not going to forget what I had to do.  It was an important action item to do and needed to be done before end of the day.

It was a busy day with reviews, meetings and interviews and by the time, I could complete my work, it was well past the late evening. I started from office and reached office after an hour of driving in chaotic traffic. With less energy left, I had my dinner and took a nap. What I again forgot was the action item that I wanted to do before end of the day. I’ve successfully repeated my mistake again.

I had to pay a penalty of Rs.500.

Are you wondering what that action item was?

It was my credit card payment and since I did not pay on time, I had to pay it with a penalty. 

Seeing how organized I was, my wife opted for auto-deduction in the bank’s website.  However, I did not register this information.  Yes, the next month, I paid the credit on time without delay just to realize that the credit was once again auto-deducted from in the later part of the day from my account. So I had to write to the bank asking them to return the money which they did after couple of follow-ups.  I am not sure what could have happened if I did not write to them.

In the above example, its very clear to know the cost of my mistake and I am sure you could relate to it or probably you would have come across similar kind of situations yourself.

Even at Workplace, we may make many mistakes with or without our knowledge and it does come with a cost, sometimes small and sometimes Big.

I thought of listing down some of such mistakes we commit and the cost it carries.

# When you are an authoritarian boss with less or no people care, you show results. But the results come at cost of people’s demotivation, burn-out and leaving the organization.  The best employees leave the worst bosses.

# When you repeatedly break your deadlines, you may get extension on your work, not on your credibility. Your credibility as an employee is lost.

# When you take unplanned leave repeatedly especially when there is an important task, your credibility is lost.

# When you take sides and show subjectivity in your decisions, your credibility as a leader is lost.

# When you micro-manage your team members, empowerment is loss in addition to motivation, creativity and out of the box thinking. 

# If you don’t follow the rules and you are not ethical, it can go on as long as it is not found. The day it’s found will be your last day in the organization.

# If we are not honest in our relationships, employees will see us through in the long-term, and the stake that you pay for being dishonest is credibility and relationship.

# If you don’t recognize your people, the result shown now will not be repeated because the employees will be demotivated.

# If you steal your team members credit, you will lose your credibility as a leader in addition to your team’s demotivation.

# When you don’t respect or follow the laws, what is at stake is your brand image.

How we cannot give any excuse to late payment and when we default, we need to bear the penalty, every mistake has a cost and even if we were to do it without our knowledge, we are responsible to bear the cost for it.   Habitual late payment will affect your credit history. Habitual mistakes, Willful or not, will kill your credibility.

Those who violate the traffic rules don’t necessarily like fatal accidents. Some do end up meeting with one. So mistake and the cost are two sides of the coin.  When you make a mistake, you are going to be accountable for its cost – all consequences.  It does not matter whether you would like it or not.

So next time, when you are about to make a mistake, do double check if you are really prepared to pay the cost for it.  It can probably act as a deterrence to not make such mistakes.

Remember, every mistake has a cost, SMALL and Big and they can spell a disaster.

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO

Recipe to get micro-managed

We hate Managers who do micro-management because we don’t want to be reminded and followed up on every step that we do.  Rather we would want to be told the result expected and leave the rest of the things to us. That’s a fair expectation.

In this context, I would say, there are two kinds of managers.

     1.     Micro Managers who really do micro management. They are after you at every step to know the progress you are making.

     2.     Mangers who don’t really want to do micro-management. They empower you and expect you to assume accountability.

Let us look at the hypothetical scenarios given below.

Let us say that you are responsible visa processing and you are assigned to do visa processing for about 20 candidates within a month’s time. This job involves co-ordinating with all the candidates, filling up an on-line visa application form, paying the fee for visa interview, getting appointment for visa interview and visa interview orientation to the candidates. This is highly critical job.

If you are working with a micro manager, don’t be surprised to get daily follow-ups and probably multiple follow-ups every day till the job is completed. He is literally after you at every step. He would ensure that the job is completed even if it were to hate him.

Let us assume that you are working with a boss who does not do micro-management, ie, he belongs to the 2^nd category given above. As per the timeline, he is asking for the status of the work and you tell him that the job is incomplete.  You list down various reasons due to which you could not complete the job on time. The reasons are very genuine and beyond your control.

What do you think has gone wrong in the 2^nd scenario wherein your boss is not a micro manager?

I think everything has gone wrong.  1) You should have built visibility on the status of the task on a regular basis till it’s logical conclusion 2) anticipated any issues beforehand or in case of any issues, you should have escalated it proactively so your boss could have had some reaction time. But what you have ensured is, the job is incomplete and more than that, you’ve given a rude surprise to your boss after the timeline.

Next time, don’t expect your boss ( though he may not believe in micro management) to not follow up or do micro management with you.

How to not get micro-managed?

Build visibility: If you don’t want to get micro-managed, do provide visibility on the status of work on a regular basis till its logical conclusion. If visa processing is to be completed for 20 candidates within a months’ time, may be a weekly status mail will help. You both are on the same page on the progress and it leaves enough room for your boss to do course correction, if required.

Proactive escalation: You should anticipate problems and escalate on time with your suggestions. If you face any problems in completing the visa processing on time, you should escalate it on time, not after the timeline at the time of follow-up.

Management by exception: If a task is delegated and you & your Manager agree on a timeline, you are responsible to complete it on time. If there is no escalation from, your boss will assume that things are on track and there is no issue. Any Manager who believes in empowerment will follow this principle. If it’s violated, trust is violated and he will be bound to micro-manage you.

Before blaming your Mangers for their micro-management leadership style, let us first objectively look at how we manage our work.  How your Boss manages you depends, to a large extent, on how you manage your boss.  

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO

What not to do in a “collective decision-making”

Let us say that you are a Sales Manager and you are recommending one of your team members for promotion to the Management. During the review, however, it was observed that his performance has not been consistent and hence he should be given few specific assignment and his performance should be observed for about 6 months and then, based on the performance, he can be promoted. You are trying your best to convince however, it did not help much. You are disappointed about the decision. You think he is critical and you want to retain that person but you are not sure how well this is going to be received by your team member.

How would you communicate this decision to your team member and what is the option you will choose?

      1.   Tell him that you’ve tried your best. Convince the team member on what he needs to improve with data and assure all support will be provided from your end but he needs to scale up.

     

      2.   Tell him that you are convinced about his promotion. But Mr. ABC in the management team is not that convinced.

     3.   Say that you disagree with the management decision but you don’t have choice.

Just reading the scenario without any emotional involvement, looks like it is easy to choose option-1. However, if we were to be in a situation like this with emotionally involvement, many would tend to resort to option 2 or 3 or combination of both ( 2 & 3) especially if the person we’ve recommended is close to us.

What does it mean when you resort to option – 2 and 3

# Violation of basic Ethics. Nothing else.

# When there is a discussion, we have every right to disagree and substantiate our disagreement with correct data.  However, if a collective decision is taken and even if it’s different from what we proposed, we need to be bound by it and respect the decision.

# Any brutal disagreement with the decision making team during the discussion is also fine but we can never criticize the collective decision to others once it’s taken. Even if you were to be disappointed, you can never show it to others. If we do so, it is certainly not ethical.

# Moreover, it’s also kind of escapism that you blame others rather than taking ownership for what happened. May be you have not reviewed the performance more objectively or you have not convinced the management team with enough data or may be you are little favorable to your favorite employee etc.,

# When you pinpoint someone who did not agree to your proposal, it creates unnecessary enmity which is not healthy.  When someone says NO, it does not mean that they are bad. It’s just another perspective, probably a more objective perspective from a third person’s point of view in the best interest of the organization.

BTW, is it really possible to choose Option-1 ?

Yes. it’s possible provided

# You’ve been doing his review on a regular basis and communicating his strengths and what he needed to improve in a specific and quantifiable manner. So it becomes easy to highlight the improvement areas now.

# You’ve assured only Performance based promotion, not any specific “time-line” based promotions.

# You are keen to retain but you are not bent upon or you don’t think that he is dispensable to your team. Believe me, many times, when the most indispensable employees leave, you get a new-someone who is better than the most indispensable ones. 

So next time, when a collective decision is taken, even if you were to disagree, do respect it. If not, it will show you in a very bad light. Remember, not all organizations will show high tolerance for it. 

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO