Tuesday 27 December 2011

Live an Let Live ! – Mantra for Communication with focus on leadership


One of the first instincts of human-beings soon after birth is Communication, and yet,
as mature adults we have a myriad of problems Communicating! Strange! One might
argue that the purpose of communication of a baby is different from that of an adult. It
is multipurpose, multidimensional etc. etc. and hence it is challenging. We go through
some of the best and tested corporate training and grooming to COMMUNICATE. I
would instead take a leaf from our ancient Indian scriptures and make it simple. We can deal effectively with differing social styles in people; Handle problems without harming
relationships; address challenges in collaboration; Cross cultural communication;
communicate effectively to establish and maintain mutual purpose and mutual respect
  • with just one mantra - Live and Let Live! Wondering how? Read on ….
What is the essence of this mantra? No matter what technique you use, if the underlying intentions are not noble, it will show through. Noble?? I can already see eyes rolling. What has noble got to do with effective communication? Can we have noble cause and intentions and still survive in this world? I am convinced it is.
Irrespective of the differing social styles, culture, religion, “survival” instinct is the
basis of human race. And anything that seemingly threatens this instinct leads to
conflicts - harms relationships, destroys trust, destroys mutual purpose and mutual
respect.
Self preservation is the behavior that ensures survival instinct. Everyone wants to
preserve their views / opinion, their respect, their interests. It is instinctive to put
mine” before the others – my views, my opinion, my respect, my interest…
Everyone tries to put theirs first and then think of mutual purpose and interest.
I for example, would start with … I need to finish task A in my project, I can do x,
y, z, but need help with two other activities, which can be done by Betty, so let me
talk to her. Now, when I go with this intention and mind-set, I would try to make it
mutually beneficial, but still my priorities and interests would be placed above Betty’s
and that’s when I will have to try putting it in a way that is attractive to her social
style, and might still sometimes end up harming our relationship.
Communication would become much simpler and effective, if we are
genuinely interested in others. This is the essence of “Live and Let Live”. Live and
Let Live means, genuine, unadulterated interest in people, which lets us grow as a
person and professional and lets others grow as well. This I can promise will lead to a
fulfilling life both personally and professionally.
Let me take the same example above, and walk through it, following Live and Let
Live mantra. I would not talk to Betty just because I need to complete task A, and I cannot complete a few activities. I would ask Betty to help me out, only if it is going to bring some benefit to Betty. Benefit could be in terms of visibility, growth, reward / recognition etc. Here I am being genuinely interested in Betty, while also trying to get my task done. If I do not see anything truly beneficial for Betty, I will not ask her.
But, can this be applied to all situations? What about communicating for your own
growth? Let me walk through this scenario. It is natural to want to grow in the Organization. But, what is the Organization going to get out of it? My thoughts
should be, what can I bring to the Organization if I take up the new role? How can it
benefit the organization and my management? If you can answer these, and then
communicate about your growth, it would be very effective.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Interpersonal Relationships

 This has been and will always be a topic of interest. It will in my opinion continue as long as beings as intelligent as humans exist. The human race thrives on the basis of interpersonal relationships. In the same breath, I also consider it the reason that endangers the existence of human race (well not literally in the near future in the very least !).

 Empathy, love, affection, respect are some of the positive dimensions of interpersonal relationships, in the sense, we have a relation with another person out of empathy, love, respect etc. Yet an overdose of these very emotions fuels selfishness, hatred, jealousy etc. One can see the paradox immediately, and am sure everyone has experienced it in either personal and / or professional life.

For e.g., in your personal life you might relate to your child / kin with empathy, love and affection. But because of your attachment to these emotions and your child / kin, anything remotely threatening this relation / attachment will be dealt with hatred, jealousy etc. which is in itself an act of selfishness.

In the professional life, one would develop professional relationships with team members, superiors etc., and one would want to thwart any situation or person posing a threat to professional relations.

From my own experience, I find this self deprecating, nonetheless every once in a while I see myself repeating the mistake. One cannot but agree with the misery that negative emotions like hatred and jealousy bring. Though at the moment we vent out our negative emotions, we are deluded into thinking that the target is affected, in reality, these negative emotions consumes the source i.e our own self.

Why is it so, and what is the solution? Our Indian Hindu scriptures harp (that is an under statement) at how wasteful "attachment" is, and that one needs to "let go". This is in fact the solution to many problems and interpersonal relationship problems is no exception.
As long as you are attached to someone or something, you will always have the fear of loosing it. No matter however much you try to protect / guard it, it seems to be imperiled. The sense of insecurity in many cases stems from the paranoia that comes with attachment. And by over-doing, we might sometimes end up jeopardizing the relation itself. This is what we mean when we talk of over-powering relations. In an over-powering relation, one tries to tweak and control the relation by all means, and gets stressed out by being paranoid.
Hence we must "let go" our attachment to people, money, fame, power and then we would naturally have genuine interest and relation with people. If we did not mind whether we had the support of people, money or fame, then we do not fear anything or anyone, we do not manipulate anything or anyone, and thereby avoid being miserable ourselves. By submitting ourselves to external support, appreciation, fame etc., we are only letting ourselves be manipulated, twisted and pushed to misery. Because, to manipulate someone, we would need to please that person, even if it means doing something that we would not like to. That is the beauty (or rather ugliness) of manipulation and attachment !
To end this cycle of misery, one needs to "let go" and enjoy every moment in this life and every relation.

Easily said than done ! But helps reinforcing within ourselves and practicing it most if not at all times.

Monday 12 December 2011

Creative Visualization(a Book by Shakti Gwain) - Use The Power of Your Imagination

I have started reading the book titled "Creative Visualization" by Shakti Gwain. I chose this book to understand how she melds Eastern World of spirituality with the Western psychology, and explore how it can be adopted for personal and professional growth.
 After having gone through the first few chapters, I don't feel let down. My own interpretation on the crux of the book is,  "Meditating on good for the greater cause, leads you to success in your own life".   The book while doling out techniques for meditation, dwells on why it is important to mean and do well unto others.

 She recommends that we start practicing it with a simple goal. I started off with the goal of reaching "x" hits within a day for this blog :) And I achieved 85% of  my goal ! Not bad for a start :)

 The lessons learnt from this simple exercise were
1. Though the goal might be materialistic in a sense, it is important that the purpose or end objective be spiritualistic, as in benefit others. It could be as little as benefiting your kin to as big as benefiting the larger world
2. Meditation and other techniques that I learnt from my spiritual leanings helped me get going
3. Affirmations are key. Shakti gives various examples of positive affirmations in her book. I found my source of strength / positive affirmation by prayer. Each of you could hinge on your own instincts.

If each of us as individuals use this in our personal and professional life, imagine what we could achieve as leaders or otherwise. Can it be used to bring us out of economic doldrums? Can it bring harmony between warring nations?

I am setting out to start visualizing for a bigger goal. Will keep you all posted in a later blog.

Until then would like to hear from others who might have / have not read this book, and experiences with visualizing, auto-suggestion etc. I am also looking for neuroscience research in this area, so any insights there would help energize this movement / thought.

Wednesday 7 December 2011

How to take charge of your growth?

To grow, one needs to be a perennial student.

In Indian scriptures, Guru (i.e. teacher) is venerated. One needs to abide by the following principles to be the perfect shishya (i.e. disciple)
1. Questioning - not with the intent of tripping / trapping the teacher, but to gain insight
2. Humility - One can never fill a full cup. One who is puffed with pride of knowledge hardly gains anything. One needs to be open minded and humble while seeking knowledge
3. Service - One needs to be prepared to serve the teacher without any sense of expectation or ego

This is relevant to present times as well. Consider every opportunity, misfortune, acquaintance as your teacher and imbibe. In an Organization setting, while working with a team in a project, consider every opportunity, lost opportunity, team member as your teacher.

  • Questioning the objective, goals, plan etc. should be to gain insight on the project and contribute, rather than tripping other team members or the project. This would help you arrive at deep and thoughtful questions that can help the team and project.
  • When in a discussion, do not demean others' point of view. You have a lot to gain both personally and professionally from various perspectives that people of different culture, gender and age bring.
  • Be prepared to go beyond your day job to extend help and your skills for different aspects of the project, however laborious, boring , or challenging it might be.

With these qualities, it would be hard not to reckon you as a leader, even if by nature of your role you might not be one. When one thinks and acts like a leader, growth is a natural consequence.

I have used the above principles in many situations at work and otherwise and have benefited from it. Though the true intent in those cases has been to learn and be of value to the team, I ended up being the "go to" person and finally promoted to a leader over course of time.

There have been cases where I have not been successful too. On introspection, it seems to me that I have been more successful when my role did not have the "leader" tag attached to it than when it was. This brings me back to where I started. One needs to be a perennial student to grow. One needs to remain a student even when bestowed the role of a Leader, and that is when one can really take charge and get set for boundless growth.

Sunday 4 December 2011

Healthy Competition !


 Is there anything called “Healthy Competition”? If competition was healthy why do we have warring nations, corporate politics, and unethical behavior? Competition has been studied to be having negative effect on people depending on the personality type, type of feedback provided etc. A highly competitive environment has also been studied to be stressful, and leading to conflicting, non-cooperative behavior among team members. Then why do we foster competition within organizations? What is the single largest benefit of fostering competition? Is it to improve quality? But it has been studied that competition distracts people from the actual task, and instead concentrate on the aspect of winning at all cost! In such a case, how can competition improve quality?

 In the early days of my career, I too had got carried away with competition. With all the relative assessment and rigmarole, I got into this never ending cycle of comparison and competition. Over a period of time, I realized that I was spending more time and effort understanding what the one sitting next to me is up to, rather than understanding what customers want. It did not stop with just that ! Comparison and competition increased my worry, jealousy, hatred, mistrust, ...and I could go on with the never ending list of vices. It slowly devoured me and when I was on the verge of giving up my career, I took stock of the situation. That is when the wastefulness of competition stared at me. From then on, I have focused my energy on understanding my own strengths and value that I can bring to the team, and the rest have followed suit. Not that it launched my trail blazing career, but I am happy and at peace with myself. Is that not what everyone yearns for? What is success in life after all? Would I have had a better career by competing?

 Most distressing is that competition and comparison start early on in a child's life. Children are judged and compared by laurels, medals etc. People fail to recognize that each child has different strengths and we should encourage children to understand their strengths and play it. When I look back at people whom I have known since childhood, laurels, medals, scores do not really matter in the long run. It does give the initial advantage. But what holds on till the end, is the character and strengths one has. Should we then encourage relative assessments in school?

 Not for a moment am I advocating mediocrity. People believe lack of competition leads to mediocrity. I will lean on spirituality to summarize. Our Indian scriptures say, do not covet others' property, what is one's is one's own. Coveting others' property only adds on to misery and detriment of our own cause. Think what good you can do unto others (in modern management terms, what value do you bring to the world at large) , and rest is taken care.

 Even for those incorrigible competitive ones, what I would ask is, which is better? Going after a larger cause of improving humanity or going after the one sitting next to you? I know there are questions in your minds on , but who gets the hike? who gets admitted into the best university? More on that later.

But for now everyone's thoughts, comments, questions, bouquet and brickbats are welcome :)

Friday 2 December 2011

How to manage your fear?

 Fear is because of the unknown. How can it be overcome? There are many theories and tips. Modern belief is to list all possible outcomes and reason out ways to handle each outcome. And then there is the spirituality angle to it. How can spirituality help overcome fear?

I have from my experience, seen that prayer helps me overcome fear. Fear is all in the mind, and hence it has to be overcome by appeasing the mind. It also aligns with some of the modern thinking on the powers of the sub-conscious mind. It is said that auto-suggestion can help tap hidden powers of the mind. It is also believed that if the sub-conscious mind strongly believes in something, the whole universe will come together to bring it to fruition. And hence, if we fear something untoward will happen, we are only mooting the universe to bring in the mishap. Instead, if we believe in the strengths of our mind and the impact that it can have on the powers of the universe, and think positively, the universe will bring prosperity to our feet. This is not to undermine the efforts needed to bring prosperity. Due diligence is ofcourse needed. But one must not worry beyond performing duties. If one has performed duties adhering to principles of life (honesty, empathy etc.), one cannot but prosper.
It is important to conform to principles, since there is also the notion that it is not just the energy emanating from us, but also those of others, that affect the outcome of one's efforts. Hence, if during the course of discharging ones duties, if one has invited negative energy from others, it will be detrimental.
In a nutshell, discharge your duties with due diligence, conforming to principles, and believe in the force of the energy of your mind and the universe. One need not live in fear or doubt prosperity.

Any experiences anyone?