Saturday, September 24, 2011

Find out these employees in your organization….

SMS/Phone employee:

Understand employees &
make your own strategy to manage them.

“I have spent 20 years in this company and everybody respects me. One employee called me after purchasing new cell phone. He told that he is calling me first. In another incident one employee gave me news of his son’s birth first. See how they respect me.”
 
Incidentally I also knew these two employees. They always used this strategy while communicating something to their superiors. Not necessary you are first to communicate, but they will tell so.

There are such stupid superiors where they wrongly misconstrue the behaviours of juniors.   

This is same like the new ad campaign of Airtel where I made the correction “Yek SMS subordinate jaruri hota hain!”  

Hazeri (attending) Employee:
When you are in the office, certain set of employees will ensure to come to you to say just hallo. They will not do it with their peers, but only with seniors in the organization. They will ensure to peep in your workplace, cabin once in a day and find opportunities to inform you the updates, mostly about other employees in the organization. They will ensure to filter the information conveniently. Communication of fabricated information is common.   

Ear and Eye Employee:
Top bosses are fully relied on these employees. These employees are much closed to the power centers. They maintain the good personal relationship with all employees. They also have their own colleagues in different functions and surprisingly they know everything what’s happening in the organization. The problem is that they communicate everything to top people and not the concern line managers. They may also fabricate the information for their own benefits.   

Darbari (Court) Employee
I always wonder how these employees are entertained by their superiors. Almost most of the time, they are in the cabin of superiors. Perhaps superiors also needed these employees to muscle their ego.  

Union Employee:
Have you seen employees who always speak about their rights, benefits, holidays and always negative? They find fault in everything. They are actually troublemakers. They are either aggressive or passive. You will always find them in cafeteria or near water cooler.    

Buddy Employee:
These employees are very comfortable to talk with. They are warm and welcoming. They are cool and silent. They take personal interest in other person. They make new employees conformable in the organization. Less assertive and good friends. But less effective when they are required to take firm stand on certain issues. However they are good opinion makers.   

Coach Employee:
Smart and matured people in the organizations. They like to coach others. They are informal coach to the people without any authority. They don’t hide their knowledge. They are like teachers. They are important in the organizations.  These employees are also good opinion makers.

Social Employee:
They are good friends. They will always help you. If they get a call that somebody is admitted in a hospital, they will ensure their support. They will come at our home to help you if you need them and they will never speak about this.


You will find different personalities in organizations. I labeled them based on their visible behavior in the organization. I don’t know how they are talented or performing employees. But some are definitely smart enough to manage their superiors. However it is upto the superior how they get managed by these employees.

However human is human and they will be human beings. You can’t do much to change them. Definitely last three set of employees are required in the organization and Management can actually use their skills. You can use these employees or their skill in different circumstances. Smart leaders do the same.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Manage your boss…

All employees in this country believe that they don’t need any boss. They also believe that companies are wasting money by hiring highly paid bosses. You will hardly find any employee who is satisfied with his boss. In employee engagement surveys, most of the times superior are rated based on the personal biases. If boss’s boss entertains employee by bypassing the boss, then it goes very difficult to manage employees.   

We have lot of expectations from bosses. We expect that boss should be the leader, motivator, coach, mentor etc etc. But we fail to understand the perspective of bosses. Employees tend to take convenient stand about the situation. We always forget that boss is successful because of work of subordinate. At the other hand boss makes you successful by assigning tasks and honing your skills and competencies. Bosses are not God and neither we.  They don’t know everything and neither we; however collaborative relationship helps both.   

If you want to climb the corporate ladder, your boss will take you there. For this you should learn to manage your boss. Try following strategies to manage him better.  

Understand him: Understand the boss as a person. How he is. What is his personality type? How he reacts and what he likes and dislikes. If you understand the boss better, you are creating more opportunities to be more effective. After all he is not your enemy. He is there to support you.  
Understand his expectations: Get clarity on goals and KRAs, but also the style of working. If your boss is perfect, then defiantly he will not expect mistakes in data.  If your boss is organized, then he will expect the same from you.  Make his expectations clear.
Give regular feedback: Give and take the feedback properly.  I have seen employees who do not bother to communicate the bosses about their task. After all your boss is accountable in the company. If you don’t give him the feedback, he will get it from somewhere else.
Don’t hide your mistakes: One my employee use to keep her mistakes under the carpet. Sometimes she uses to manipulate the situation by not communicating the issues. I never like that. Never hide mistakes. You are human being and human being makes mistakes, Exhibit your courage to admit mistakes. However don’t repeat the same mistakes.
Don’t lie: Honesty is the best policy. Being truthful is one of the ways to be successful in life. Never lie with your boss. He will come to know anyway if you are lying.   
Improve your communication: You must be expecting from your boss that he should communicate everything to you. This is applicable to you also. Communication is the area which always has the room for improvement.  Improve your communication with your boss. Don’t scare to go to him if you have any issues.
Don’t complain: I have seen employees who always complain. You will have lot of challenges in professional life. Challenges make person perfect. Never complain about person, situation, and resources.
Don’t give any excuse: Employees give many excuses if the work is not done. You are responsible for what you are doing. Result counts and not your excuses.
Don’t gossip about your boss: Gossiping about your boss and making fun of him is very unprofessional. Somehow gossips are never secret and bosses come to know what you say about him.
Be effective and result oriented: You are hired for your work. You are expected to show the results. If you are not result oriented, you will not survive in the organization.
Go extra mile: He assigns the task because he thinks you have the caliber to do that task. Hence ask more from boss. Go to him and ask if you can support him if he is busy. Ask delegation. Take more responsibilities.
Be creative and think out of the box: If you are traditional and just following the SoPs, you are not adding any value. You are just a clerk. Be creative in day to day work. Go with ideas and influence your boss.    

You can not avoid bosses in your life. If you can not avoid them, then it is better to collaborate with them. Try to learn from your bosses. Your boss is also human being. He may have egos, emotions and he will also behave as others behave. However he also recognizes the fact that he needs you. He will definitely coach and mentor you. It is upto you how you take his coaching and mentoring.

Friday, September 09, 2011

Internal Specifications of Personality

We know human beings are complicated and personalities are more complicated to understand.  Every personality has specifications. External specifications like physical appearance, look etc. More complicated are internal specifications. Internal specifications include different ego states, behaviour, mindset, attitude etc. 

Internal specifications are the engines to drive the person and he behaves, acts based on the orders programmed or conditioned as per the internal specifications. These internal specifications are programmed in the mind. It is very interesting to understand the person in totality.

Relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a person's behavioural tendencies. These stable patterns are foundation of personality dimensions.  But we always see what our mind wants to see. This is called as a perception. The combination of personality traits & knowledge base generates Perception in minds of people about the person. These traits are the part of internal specifications.  

Following are some of the examples of internal specifications of personality.

Talents: A recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. We always refer talent with brain. But talent is the right result of thought process and behaviour at the right time for the right results.

Attitude: An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_(psychology))

Thought process: Talent is the driver of thought process of the person.

Conscientiousness: Conscientiousness is the trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting), and need for achievement. It is an aspect of what has traditionally been called character. Conscientious individuals are generally hard working and reliable. When taken to an extreme, they may also be workaholics, perfectionists, and compulsive in their behavior. People who are low on conscientiousness are not necessarily lazy or immoral, but they tend to be more laid back, less goal oriented, and less driven by success.

Emotional Stability: How the emotional state of mind is.

Openness to Experience: This trait is the characteristic of person where he shows the flexibility and the degree how he is open to change and new experiences.

Agreeableness: Agreeableness is a tendency to be pleasant and accommodating in social situations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness)

Introversion and Extroversion: These are the traits of personality where you can find out the ability of person to deals with others. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extroversion)
  
The question is when we speak about the specification; it should be in certain unit. Unfortunately in personalities we can not measure the units in absolute numbers.  

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Are you tough?

“You should be tough, ruthless and very assertive when you are in business. If managers are not tough, then their subordinate will not be tough and it is very difficult to sustain in the competitive world.” So-called tough manager was preaching the junior managers in the meeting. He then declared that there would be one sharing session where all managers would share their experiences on how they were tough in their personal life. It was year 2008. The indications of slow down were prominent. The business was down. All new projects and businesses were not doing well. The reasons for the failure were different, but the slowdown was the opportunity to conceal their failure.

“You should be empathetic with people.” Was his another preaching topic. He read it somewhere about empathy and started to preach people. If you are empathetic, you can achieve desired results. However he was literally spoiling the career of good employees by doing experiments about their profiles.

“There is a clause of termination in appointment letter, one month notice period. Ask employees to resign without any severance packages. You do not have any obligations. You should be empathetic; still you should be tough and ruthless.” He ordered in another meeting.  

Empathy means understanding other’s feeling, putting yourself in their shoes and deciding your strategy to deal with them.  Excellent fundamental! I personally use this tactic while dealing with different people.

CEO of the company decided to close one office at one location. So- called tough and empathetic manager was given the responsibility of this project. But this whole project was handled very unprofessionally where high profile and critical talent were treated like a contract and casual workmen. They started agitation against the management. The matter was referred to media and political leaders including ministers. Adverse reports and comments spoiled the reputation of the company.  CEO had to take the control of the situation to salvage where management had to agree to pay them heavy severance package.  

So-called empathic and tough manager failed in his strategies. He actually did not know the real meaning of empathy. He tried to be tough; but at wrong situation with wrong people.

After some days, management decided to be tough with him without being empathetic.

Being tough does not mean you miss the human dimension. Good companies focus log term goals. The hiring of talent is supposed to be for achieving long term goals. Good companies touch the talent cost at last when all the resorts fail; however bad companies focus cost reduction by reducing the talent at first site. You can be tough with situation. You also can be tough with people but before that you also need to understand the consequences and your capability to handle the consequences.  

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