Human being & Self Esteem

Karan joined the MNC in finance to head one of the departments. He was doing good and his boss was happy with him. He was confident but always blamed others. After a few months he started crying on his status & salary. He started comparing himself with others. According to him he was great and indispensable.  His manager increased his salary but again he started crying on his grade. His grade was also upgraded after 2 years. Now he was positioned decently in the organization, however he again started crying for the new role. His manager recommended him for a new role and he also got that. However, after 1 year he was asked to resign. His new manager, who was also a solid leader, had high expectations from him as his earlier manager had given solid feedback about him. Somehow Karan could not cope with the expectations and finally he was put on PIP. The issue was the inflated self-esteem of Karan. His earlier manager nurtured his inflated esteem and never gave the right feedback to Karan.

You must have seen a lot of such Karan who do great with one manager but not with another. One reason is the esteem of the person. Karan applied to a lot of companies, but he could not get the job which he was enjoying in earlier company. His inflated self-esteem ruined his career.    

Sandesh is another employee who was promoted after Karan moved into another role. However, Sandesh was always doubtful about everything. He was not confident about himself. He thought that he was not ready for the role. He was sceptical about taking such large responsibilities. He wanted to go slow. According to his manager Sandesh has that functional skills and he could develop on his other behavioural skills. Sandesh took the role but could not perform. He always used to struggle while communicating with seniors. He was always undervaluing himself. 

Sandesh was exactly opposite Karan who was not confident, didn't want to take decisions. Such people don’t trust their other possibilities. They get carried away by every situation. If something goes wrong their self-esteem drops.

Sandesh was the victim of low self-esteem. Over a period of time with proper coaching, Sandesh improved drastically. He became a performing employee. 

“What is right self-esteem is the question and if you want to enjoy life, your esteem is the key. You should have a high self-esteem.”

Let’s understand about self -esteem.

Self-esteem is a way of thinking and feeling about self. You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, you can’t touch it, but you can feel it and it is there when you speak about yourself. It is a self -worth or your personal value. 

Your potential to achieve something totally depends upon your self-esteem. If it is inflated or low chances of failure are more compared to high self- esteem.  When people experience positive self-esteem, they feel & look good.

When a child is born, s/he doesn’t see himself good or bad. People around her help her to develop self-esteem as she grows. Sometimes continuous failures and situations affect your self-esteem and you think yourself useless.

It is possible that during covid19 situation, people may have lost their job, they must be disappointed because of the uncertain future. Few must be depressed, and it is vital to understand how to overcome the low self-esteem.

Following are a few tips to keep your self-esteem high.

Don’t compare: Don’t compare yourself with others. Life is not the race. You need the right time to achieve something. Somebody may achieve something at an early age however somebody takes time. Wait for that right moment and right time.

Take pride: Feel proud about yourself. Recollect those moments when you do something different and achieve something, small or big doesn’t matter. Feel proud about others who are close to you.

Take interest: Think, how can you make your day interesting? Follow your hobbies, speak with inspiring people, listen to their lectures, read books.

Think positive: What is that one thing positive you saw daily? Feel good about that positive experience.

Control feeling: Acknowledge the situation and don’t react. Situation triggers the thought but before reacting, take a pause, think and then respond. You can control your thoughts and behaviours by doing this.

Giving something: Have you done something for somebody? Try to give something, support, help, anything. What you give, it comes back with abundance.

Fun: Enjoy life. You only go through life once, so make the best of it. Love yourself.  Do the fun.

Keep in mind that it is difficult to escape from inflated or low self-esteem, but if you are among the people who have high self-esteem, even if you occasionally give in to the instability of certain situations, you are much closer to achieving the happiness and satisfaction in life that will make you feel blessed.

Remember that famous quote,” Your biggest enemy is yourself, so be your best friend”.  

Wish you all a happy Teachers Day!

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle; Vitality in Human Resource  

Human and animals….

During  training programmes, to break the ice, we ask participants to introduce themselves in a special way. Sometimes we ask to take some time to understand the next person and introduce him to other participants; sometimes we ask to relate themselves with one animal and so on… Relating with certain animal is interesting. Participants relate themselves to different animals and sometimes particular species of the animal.

It is more interesting to understand why they relate to particular animal. Dog, Cat, Tiger, Elephant, Monkey are the animals which score more in relating. Fox, Wolf are rarely related by the participants. One participant related to the Tiger, but specifically to “White Tiger”. He mentioned that he has rare skill sets and likes to identify himself as different.

In realty, animals are more honest than human beings. Cat will never behave like fox or fox will never behave like elephant or vice versa. They are real and show the real characteristics. Dog is loyal, cat is sustainable, tiger is fearless, elephant is brainy, and monkey is always busy. When you see the human being he has everything in him. Human being will never be real and will exhibit all the traits of different animals.   

Human beings have a brain, so s/he thinks like elephant, but not always. Sometimes s/he will make stupid mistakes and make the mess. Not necessary they will use their brain.  Dog is known for his loyalty to his master, human being will also show the loyalty to his/her owner, or boss, but not necessary always. Tiger or lion are fearless. Human being will be fearless as per the situation. Absence of courage is the fear. Human being takes the stand as per the situation. He has to create the courage and confidence. Elephants, foxes or wolfs stay in group, human also stay in group, we call it “team”.  Elephants are more like a team, however foxes and wolfs are groups without any values. But these animals are predictable. You don’t predict when human being will behave like fox or elephant. Their behaviour is always erratic.

So what is the bottom-line?

You can always learn from animals. There are lots of stories on these learning like Jataka’s stories. The best way to bring out the best behavior learned from animal.

There is elephant, dog, tiger, cat, donkey and many more…. And off course each one has unique good behaviour which we can actually learn…

But behave… you have the choice of good one and bad one…

Communication Technology Syndrome

Communication Technology syndrome is the abnormal behavior seen in human being (especially in educated human being) where s/he becomes a slave of technical instruments like mobiles, software and gazettes and social networking sites.

I have seen people checking their mobile phones for SMS, some unnecessary updates. By doing this they ignore the person seating next to them. They are unaware about their surrounding. People speaking on mobile while driving and putting their and other’s life in danger are really idiots. The height is wearing hand-free and sometimes Bluetooth instrument. The person wearing Bluetooth instruments looks funny to me. The question comes in mind, “how busy the guy is? And if he has not responded to the mobile alert will the world end?” 

“We have nothing to discuss when I go at home; we shared everything on phone, or face book.” One person was sharing. “We go home, eat, watch TV and go to sleep.”

Now a day, people communicate more through mails, mobile phones, and facebook status update. The communication has been through technology and one to one communication has been totally ignored.

I have seen the status update of one person expressing his love to his wife on the fecebook. Human being has the need to glorify himself. Every person has the desire to appear extraordinary among the crowd. Every like and comment on facebook update makes them happy.  Hence they are eager to post the happening in the life, but sometimes they ignore the privacy part of the life.   

This behaviour is a habit. Checking updates on facebook, being on mobile continuously is the obsession. This can be converted into the compulsive obsession. Is it normal? I don’t think so. This behaviour is definitely abnormal. People do the farming, grow their chicken and spend half of the day on social networking sites. They live in second life on web.  This is resulting into loss of productivity.

Blackberries show red signal when some message or email appears in the inbox.  This is distracting and there are people who even can not sleep peacefully checking and responding to those mails.   

Technology is for human being and human being is not for technology. You can not replace the technology with human interaction, interpersonal communication and relationship. Technology is the mean to improve the relationship and communication and hence we should know where and how to use these tools.      

Are you motivated?

“Dam it,” he punched on his palm (same like Mahesh Kothare does in his movies), “I am fade up with this monotonous job. I need some motivation” He was expecting some solution from me on his bored life. His second intension must be political. If you speak something with HR, at least it gets noticed. However, I have been selective in acting on such things and this is with experience. Yes. We have to listen everything, but you have to be selective about the issues on which actions are needed.

“Have you learned something different?” I asked him.

“My life is in numbers, I don’t know anything different.” He replied.

“Then better to find out the ways to enjoy this.” I suggested.   

What is motivation and what does it have to do with personal and business success? How can we become more motivated? Learning what motivates us and how to use our motivations is yet another key success factor. We say “we are motivated” when we feel driven to work for something we need or desire. We are motivated to attain something we are seeking, whether it’s material, intellectual, emotional or spiritual.

You are aware about different theories of motivation. The key is to find out what motivates us.  Our success depends on our motivation. If parents are unmotivated, their state of mind may have a negative effect on their work, which, in turn, could affect their present and future income. Their failure in that area could lead to negative effects at home and produce breakdowns in their most fundamental relationships.

Somebody asked the question, “What is motivation?”

“Motivation is the urge to do something.” I replied. The question is what is that urge?  

Emotions play a large role in whether we are motivated or not. How we handle events, based on our expectations about them, determine whether we feel calm or resentful, hopeful or resigned. We are the ones who choose motivation. As the owners of what we feel and what we think, we can use this power to increase our motivation to be more successful.

This urge can be find out by some simple methods.

1. Check your level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Take charge of ascending from one level to the next, meeting your basic needs and focusing on your higher needs.
2. Create positive states of mind: Feeling optimism, hope and the certainty of being able to achieve your objectives will motivate you to prevail.
3. Be tolerant of “relative failure”: When something goes wrong, consider it as just another step on your road to success. Correct it and move forward.
4. Ask for help from people who admire, love and know you well: Successful people are motivated by the people around them. Their support provides them courage and strength to persevere.
5. Take inspiration from successful people: Observing how people, at times with little ability or resources are able to reach ambitious goals inspires us to be successful as well.
6. The last but not least is -believe on “the law of attraction”. You get what you are. You are what you think, what you imagine, what you dream. So be positive with everything. It will bring positive vibes.

It's up to you to give yourself the opportunity to believe in it and use it every day.

Self Awareness

At what extent we are aware about ourselves. It can be related from everything, how you talk, how you walk, how you behave and more importantly, how you are within as a human being. We must have different perceptions about ourselves. I know one person who was working in largest media house. He perceived himself as the most eligible CEO candidate. His major perception was that the organization can not run without him well. Whatsoever organization is doing, all is due to his leadership efforts. In fact organization is doing much better after his exit.

 

You must have seen the similar people in world who have exorbitant views about themselves. Everybody, including successful executives has blind spots; however we do not wish to check these blind spots. We create positive or negative impressions on the community due to these blind spots. Most of the times, it is negative, due to unawareness about the SELF.  

We do not want to be taught or learn when it comes to our personality. This is more difficult to the seniors. I had interacted one senior person to whom I had given the feedback that he was extra perfectionist resulting delay in decisions. He had lot of justifications like history & dynamics of the organization. (Afterwards, I came to know that that was a tactic to delay decisions and save his skin. We call such people, oily wrestler) He was not aware about this at all. He perceived this as his great leadership style.      

We normally learn to identify our strengths and weaknesses. But I am not sure, how we try to focus on development areas. When I interview candidate, most of candidates speak about their strengths, but when ask about their weaknesses, it goes very difficult to them to answer. We never try to actually identify these areas.

I personally think that making aware about SELF is the journey within you. This is very difficult and off course long journey. But at least, we can take small step and try to improve developmental areas. For example improving on body language, eating habits, communication styles etc etc. The better way to do it have a feedback from well wishers, friends, colleagues and family members.  You can expand the known area and reduce the blind spot.    

Self awareness includes, knowing your emotions, your personality types, your overall disposition, your behavioural pattern and everything which is known as soft skills. In totality how you are as the person. If you don’t remove the blind spot, you will not be able to develop yourself as a human being and even professional.

(Please refer Johari Window to understand the blind spot available on Google.)