Was there really a recession? Were you able to see it? Did you experience it?

I still remember a post that I had written about an year back on the job change confusion. The US economy was hit by one of the worst recessions and the Indian economy felt the ripples. Almost all the industries felt it and took some very harsh decisions including laying off a lot of employees and putting a freeze on hiring. There were not too many organizations that were interested in appraising salaries or, paying bonuses even. They wanted to remain conservative in spending and hence decided against doing any of these.

The Million Dollar Question

But the million dollar question was – Was it actually due to the ailing economy or, was it a deliberate attempt on the part of the organizations to save on the funds disguising recession?

Whatever the situation was, there was no or, very less job options available in the market and there was all-round firing happening. So the advice from any job counselor would be to stick to your current job and not look for a change.

For those of you who opted to stay with your current employer, even though pay-hikes were negligible, there is good news finally. The economy is opening up and organizations have started hiring.

The Situation Now!

The recession is finally over. Almost all economies have started recovering, including the US economy. Organizations that were in a strict cost-efficiency mode have finally decided to shed their inhibitions and re-open. Although the fact remains that recession is over and the economies are opening up, the recovery is yet not complete.

An ambiguous explanation to the entire situation. Right?

I would not want to question your thoughts because it is true. The explanation is indeed ambiguous. As a matter of fact, nobody can say it with conviction that the recession is finally over. Just as it went into a spiraling downward movement about an year back taking everybody by surprise, it could come up or, even go further down.

If that be the case how will you take a call, right now. What should be your plan of action?

The Plan of Action

Don’t take any hasty decision. Take a planned and calculated course of action. It is true that organizations like Infosys, TCS etc. have announced their ambitious hiring plans. Other organizations like American Express and Barclays are also hiring. So there is no doubt that there are a lot of opportunities. But it is advisable that your choose your career options very carefully.

If you think that your current organization is not doing too well or, that your appraisal is not satisfactory, you should look for a change. If you current status is not too good, then you can pick the next best opportunity that is coming your way. But if your current organization is stable and your role is kind of satisfying, then you should wait for a comparatively better opportunity. Till then you should stick to your current role and stay tight.

Economic situations like the one that is prevailing calls for a well-thought about career move. The volatility in the economy still remains. Think and decide.

What is the secret to a happy day?

The other day I was reading an article from Stephen Covey. In this article he had explained a principle called as the 90/10 principle. This is what he had to say about the principle -

10% of life is made up of what happens to you, ……90% of life is decided by how you react……

What exactly does this mean?

It simple means that you do not have control over 10% of what happens to you. The remaining 90% is different and this is very much in our control.

There is no rocket science to happiness. It is a simple decision on your part – to be happy or, not. We are always given 2 choices of reacting to a particular situation. Whether we will be happy or, not is decided by the choice that we pick. This principle was a beautiful explanation to this concept.

Did you ever have control over a cup of coffee spilling onto your shirt, a pedestrian jumping across you vehicle or, the printer cartridge printing unclear all of a sudden? Not really, isn’t it? But how you react to this situation is something that you have complete control over.

The key to getting this 90% right is to maintain your composure, be calm, smile and just move on. In doing that you give a pleasant approach to the others and they too tend to forget the frustration and dissatisfaction that they are surrounded with and in turn makes a happy day for them too.

The first thing to in all such situations where you would have shouted at or, yelled at, is to remain calm and composed. Stephen Covey explains this with a beautiful example -

You are eating breakfast with your family. Your daughter knocks over a cup of coffee onto your business shirt. You have no control over what just what happened. What happens when the next will be determined by how you react.You curse. You harshly scold your daughter for knocking the cup over.

She breaks down in tears. After scolding her, you turn to your spouse and criticize her for placing the cup too close to the edge of the table. A short verbal battle follows. You storm upstairs and change your shirt. Back downstairs, you find your daughter has been too busy crying to finish breakfast and get ready for school. She misses the bus. Your spouse must leave immediately for work.

You rush to the car and drive your daughter to school. Because you are late, you drive 40 miles an hour in a 30 mph speed limit. After a 15-minute delay and throwing $60 traffic fine away, you arrive at school. Your daughter runs into the building without saying goodbye. After arriving at the office 20 minutes late, you find you forgot your briefcase. Your day has started terrible. As it continues, it seems to get worse and worse. You look forward to coming home, When you arrive home, you find small wedge in your relationship with your spouse and daughter.

Why? Because of how you reacted in the morning. Why did you have a bad day?

1. Did the coffee cause it?
2. Did your daughter cause it?
3. Did the policeman cause it?
4. Did you cause it?

The answer is “4″.

You had no control over what happened with the coffee. How you reacted in those 5 seconds is what caused your bad day. Here is what could have and should have happened.

Coffee splashes over you. Your daughter is about to cry. You gently say, “It’s ok honey, you just need, to be more careful next time”. Grabbing a towel you rush upstairs. After grabbing a new shirt and your briefcase, you come back down in time to look through the window and see your child getting on the bus. She turns and waves. You arrive 5 minutes early and cheerfully greet the staff. Your boss comments on how good the day you are having.

The application of this 90/10 principle at work is also very effective. More often that not, the stress and tension that you feel at work is because of the choice of the wrong way of reacting to a situation. At such otherwise stressful situations like a loss of job, application of the 90/10 principle to put your energy into constructive things could help you handle the situation much better.

Photograph courtesy Crystal Leigh Shearin

The first step in perception management will be to ensure that the little time that you spend with the ones who you wish to influence is positive in all sense. Let me take the example of the regular employee. What is it that is influencing the superiors to form a negative perception about the good employee? It is the lack of interaction of this employee with his superiors, during the days that he is in office. The superiors don’t see much of him on such days and add to it the few days that he is on leave and a perception is made that the employee is never available.

How will you change the perception here? Just start interacting with your superiors a bit more on the days you are in office. Let them see a bit more of you. They will start to see a lot of you and would not miss you when you are on leave. Another thing you could do is to make people realize that you are never on leave. Before you go on a leave, make it a point to go to your bosses and engage in a chat during which you let them know that you will be on leave the next day after a long time – a much needed break.

To sum it up, the single most important and easiest way to perception management is to project a positive behavior to your superiors in the little time that you interact with them or, increase the interaction time, whichever is feasible to you.

There is nothing wrong in “Perception management”, though a few people profess that it is the wrong practice. You have been a very sincere employee but the sincerity needs to be appreciated by your superiors if you are to grow in your career. So a bit of dressing-up is not unethical.

What is the single most important thing that distinguishes a good leader from a bad one?

You will find numerous leaders around you – in your organization, in your country and even in your family. Leaders influence you and your actions and in some way becomes responsible for your goals in life. They pave the way to your career and show you the ways to achieving them.

It is the same in case of a bad leader too. He too would influence you to a great extent. But it is unlikely that you would look upto him. Perhaps because of his behavior. Is there something else as well that makes him different from a good leader?

Empathy!!!

It is empathy that distinguishes a good leader from a bad. That’s right.

Leadership houses on the foundation of empathy. I have quite often come across leaders, rather worked with leaders who are more focused towards getting things done or, achieving their individual goals in life. In doing so they would not be bothered about how their followers are feeling or, what they are going through. They would profess things that they would not have done in the wildest of their dreams.

A lot of leaders, after they become leaders forget the path that they have treaded en-route to their position. They forget the difficulties that they had faced. They start thinking as if they were never in the position that their followers were in. This brings in an “I am not bothered” approach in their behavior. People follow such leaders for some time, but gradually when they start feeling that their leader is not empathetic towards them, they start to move away from such leaders.

What is Empathy?

A bookish definition is not what I would want to present here as an answer to this question. What is real is empathy?

My manager walks up to me and says that he wants to spend some time with me. He sits with me and listens to what I have to say. He is transparent with me and understands and acknowledges everything that I am going through and speaks to me about all the changes, its impacts and the like. I start to feel that he is with me and is like me and that he understands me.

This is a situation, when I as an employee look up to my Manager as a leader – a leader who is empathetic towards me. We can quote a thousand different definitions for “empathy”, but what empathy actually means can only be explained by someone who has actually been touched with it.

For a manager to develop empathy, he has to come out of his shell. A manager has to get outside and spend time with his direct reports to understand his situation and develop a sense of empathy towards him. Spending time with your direct reports at his workstation is not what it means. Rather, you need to spend time with him at places where he is his actual self, where he behaves naturally. It is only then that you will be able to understand him in detail. Such interactions help you know what the real world and real environment is like. You need to be genuinely interested in your people.

At this juncture it is also important to understand the fact that merely spending time with them will not bring in empathy. You need to ensure that you bring back the evidence of this real world to your office.

It is not unnatural for all of us to get entangled in data, given the kind of tough environment that we work in. But what we need to take care off is that we are not forgetting how to empathize with our direct reports. You might have all other traits in you, but without empathy these traits are of no use and you would still be much far away from being a good leader.

Can a book really prepare you for an interview?

I never believed it could and to be very frank, I had never read too many such books. But some time back one of my readers suggested that I should refer books that could help them in appearing for their interviews. This is when I decided that I will review a few such good books from time to time so that it benefits you.

This month I will review one of my personal favorites – “Winning Job Interviews” by Dr.Paul Powers. Of all the books that are based on cracking job interviews, this book has been one of the best that I have ever read. I was surprised to find this on Amazon and at a really low price.

What is “Winning Job Interviews”?

This book written by Dr.Powers, is a complete job hunt book, which starts from job hunting, getting called in for the interview and then cracking the interview. Dr.Powers has sandwiched humor and thought into his book excellently and in such a way that you will enjoy the read and will never feel that your are reading a book on job hunting and job interviews.

Dr.Powers opens the book with a chapter on “Job Hunting” and titled it appropriately as “Why Job Hunting sucks”? The chapter is presented in a humorous way and after you read it, you will realize the humor behind job hunting. He goes onto discuss about being an effective job hunter and the ways to being and effective job hunter. A few techniques that he discusses included thing like networking, posting and researching the success statistics of each recruiter. Initially I felt that the things being discussed were a bit too theoretical, but as I read through to the next chapters, I realized the relevance of each of the things that Dr. Powers had described in the book.

The next section focuses on preparing for the job interview. In this section his focus is mainly on researching and practicing. His lays emphasis on researching about the company that you are applying for. You can prepare mock questions and practice them with your friends and relatives thus improving on the preparedness for an interview and reducing the anxiety associated with it.

As a closing note in the book, Dr.Powers discusses about the importance of maintaining a record of your contacts so that your can use them in the future if you have to go job hunting again. It seemed irrelevant initially, but later as recession crept and people started loosing jobs, especially the ones who felt that they were very secure in their current jobs, I started to realize the importance of this.

The book beautifully describes tips to get over the normally asked question – “tell me something about yourself”. The author describes about how to include your skills in the answer that you give rather than just harping on your tasks. He teaches how to take control of the interview instead of the interviewer being in control.

This book is an amazing read and at the cost that it is available at Amazon, it is a steal of a deal for anyone who is looking to prepare for an interview, rather crack an interview. The book is a beautifully laid out masterpiece that can help you achieve your personal career goals in life.

Check out the book at Amazon -

Winning Job Interviews: Reduce Interview Anxiety / Outprepare the Other Candidates / Land the Job You Love

If you are wondering how anger can boost your career, then you are at the right place. Read on to know how.

Negative emotions such as fear and anger are inborn and are of tremendous importance. Negative emotions are often crucial for survival: careful experiments such as ours have documented that negative emotions narrow and focus attention so we can concentrate on the trees instead of the forest.

This is what Professor George Vaillant, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School had to say.

Anger can be both constructive and destructive. It is anybody’s guess as to which type of anger can help you boost your career – It indeed is constructive anger.

In a previous post we discussed about the importance of controlled aggression. In contrast to it, one does not need to suppress or, control his anger. Instead  what is required is to channelize it properly.

What is anger?

Anger is a reaction to the feeling of helplessness, when you realize that you want to do something, but you are not able to do it.

Professor George Valliant, further has to say that,

“People think of anger as a terribly dangerous emotion and are encouraged to practice ‘positive thinking’, but we find that approach is self-defeating and ultimately a damaging denial of dreadful reality. Negative emotions such as fear and anger are inborn and are of tremendous importance. Negative emotions are often crucial for survival: negative emotions narrow and focus attention so we can concentrate on the trees instead of the forest.”

So what is required is controlled and constructive anger. But how will you ensure that your anger is constructive?

Ways of channelizing anger into constructive forms:-

• Whenever you feel angry, try not to exhibit that in public. The best way to control the exhibition of anger is to tell yourself, “Relax, relax”. Keep saying it to yourself until you start to feel that your temper is lowering down.
• Sit down and think, as to whose fault was it, that gave rise to the situation. Think logically for about 5-10 minutes and you will start to realize that your too were partially at fault.
• We described anger as an emotion against in-capability to do something. The solution hence lies in the statement. Find what capability is it that you are found wanting for. Work towards attaining that capability – if you cannot gain it yourselves, network with people who have power and capability.

How can anger help you at work?

Most often, you get angry at work because of increasing dissatisfaction. Other reasons could be strained relationships with your superiors, excessive work pressure, inability to control certain decisions etc.

Each of these reasons can trun out to work in your favor if you learn the art of channelizing your anger in a constructive way. You will learn to network better and would be able to build stronger realtionships with your superiors, peers and subordinates. You will also learn to better manage your time and delegate work. You will start to find reasons of being satisfied, or you will look for better opportunities that provide you satisfaction. You will also be in a better situation to bifurcate professional and personal things and will learn not to bring work to home, thus bringing harmony and peace to your home.

What is your thoughts on constructive anger? What are your choices of channelizing anger in a constructive way?

Technorati Tags: channelizing anger constructively, constructive anger, motivational thoughts

Is aggression good for your career?

Many a times I have seen people in the top management being a bit too much aggressive. I have also come across quite a few employees in the lower management levels also who have exhibited excessive aggression. How good is aggression and what level of management does it benefit?

It is good to be aggressive, especially if you are into sales and marketing. It is said that the most aggressive of salesman are the ones who are the most successful. Aggression helps a salesman in pitching for his product with full confidence. In a way he overwhelms the customer’s thought process and induces him to think the way he wants him to think, thus creating an urge for the product that he is selling. And because the customer does not have too much time to think, the salesman is able to sell his product.

Does the story end there?

It would have ended there if the customer (consumer or, market) in question was that of the 1950s. The markets have changed now to become a buyers’ market and so the story does not end there. Customers have options these days and every company knows that if they do not keep their customers happy, they will loose then to their competitors. In such a situation, aggressive selling only helps meet the goal for the moment. When the customer finally gets time to think, he will realize that it was a forced sale and he will return the product or, decide not to buy from the company anymore.

Let’s ask the question again. Is aggression good for sales? The answer would be – Controlled aggression is good for sales.

Aggression in Management -

I was attending a workshop being conducted by one the top management personnel in my organization, when suddenly a participant stood up and questioned a logic that the speaker gave. The question was valid and would have made any speaker think. The speaker in question here, got irritated, probably because the questioner was a lower level manager and was a new entrant into the organization. His response did not provide a rebuttal to the questioner, but he indirectly meant to tell the participant that he should not be questioning somebody in the top management. He, in a way wanted to make the participant realize that he was in command.

The workshop turned out to be a flop with not too much of attention from any of the participant and even a few quitting the workshop in between. Later we got to know that the feedback that the participants gave the speaker was very poor. It is worthy of mention here that the speaker was an extremely intelligent person, with immense experience in the field that he was in and was the subject of the workshop, had good knowledge about the subject, was an extremely good orator and a public speaker.

Aggression can be extremely harmful, irrespective of what position you are in, or what level of management you belong to.

“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

Control your aggression. Think of a situation in your organization where both parties take to aggression. There would be no solution. Logical thinking and a logical explanation is what can help you succeed.

People Managers, especially should bear in mind that you cannot lead your people by being aggressive with them. You need to understand them, their needs and their thoughts and evaluate things logically instead of taking to aggression. A composed discussion can provide you a resolution or, a solution rather than an aggressive discussion.

What is the first question that you get to hear from an interviewer?

“Tell me something about yourself”.

Most of the interviewers start with this question and most of the interviewees take it the wrong way and respond to it. A poor first impression!!

Why is this question the favorite of these interviewers? What is the response that they expect from an interviewee? When everything is clearly and legibly written in the CV that is in front of an interviewer, why does he ask this question?

These could be many more such questions in your mind but the answer to all this is simple. Because he wants to know the reason he should hire you.

This one sentence has quite a bit of it in it. Let me elaborate on the question and the motive behind asking such a question. A CV is a good enough picture of a candidate but is an incomplete picture. It is not uncommon for us to summarize everything that we did in a paragraph or, two to fit into our Curriculum Vitae and squeeze the rest of the things into the next couple of paragraphs. While we do this ( and this is required because a CV cannot be a novel) we tend to ignore small and important things that we did in our previous roles, just because we feel that it is too unimportant for our CV.

So when I as an interviewer intends to interview a candidate, my objective is to find the 1-2-3 points that can justify the reason for hiring the candidate for the particular role. But these things will obviously not be there in the CV which is almost similar for all the candidates who have applied for the position. This is where my favoritism for the question “tell me something about yourself” comes into the picture.

When I ask this question, me expectation from the candidate is a response that explains a few special skill sets that he possesses or, some unique experience of his, that he has not mentioned in the CV, and which makes him feel that he is the right fit for the position.

So how will you go about responding to this question?

• Before every interview, ensure that you note down about 5-7 points on things that you did in your previous roles, which were of value and which are not there in your CV.
• These points should be relevant to the position that you are applying for.
• Practice speaking these out aloud and in a synchronous way.
• Form a good meaningful paragraph with these points.

So, the next time when you are asked this question, “tell me something about yourself”, understand that what the interviewer wants to hear from you is, why you think you are the right fit for this position and what are the skills that you possess because of which you think, you would be the best candidate for the position.

The BPO and Call center culture has brought about quite a lot of changes – some positive and some negative. Though critics and well-wishers are right in saying that there the changes are more of negative, especially in India, there would be no denying the fact that there a lot of changes that are positive as well.

One such welcome change was the tobacco-free revolution that brought about a change in the smoking habits of quite a few BPO employees. Smoking had become a fashion statement for these employees working in BPOs, majority of them youth. What started as a reason to stay awake in the night shifts that, they had to work in, soon became an addiction that was difficult to get rid off.

I have been witness to my friend and colleagues in my organization becoming chain smokers. No sooner has one cigarette finished, that they light another one. Then they would blame the entire habit on the night shifts and the work pressure. I would often wonder as to how smoking relieved somebody of the work pressure. Nevertheless, smokers felt so.

In just about a few days, a small cigarette shop popped up outside the office premises and business boomed for him. Who cares even if it is at the cost of somebody’s life.

Then came the tobacco-free revolution and banners popped up everywhere urging people to quite smoking and that smoking within office premises was banned. The otherwise official smoking zone in the organization turned into a garden and employees had to walk a bit of distance to go outside the office premises to smoke. Soon people felt the pain to walk outside the premises, though some of them still had the motivation to do it. The others, started to quit smoking slowly and cited various other reasons for it.

Whatever the reasons quoted, this change in culture at least ensured that the youth in India are not sacrificed to the deadly habit of smoking.

Photograph courtesy Vivek Chugh

As was being expected, Barack Obama finally fulfilled his promise of formulating policies that will discourage “Outsourcing”, so that there are more job opportunities in the United States. So what is this policy?

Barack Obama finally initiated a bill that is still pending approval at the US Congress, is aimed at providing tax-cuts to companies that operate within US and imposing higher taxes and removal of tax benefits to US companies that outsource business to countries like that of India. While announcing this President Obama did not forget to make special mention of Bangalore. But is this policy going to work?

The United States of America is already reeling under severe economic recession. Quite a few of its top companies have gone bankrupt already. Will the US want its companies to incur more costs. Because outsourcing is here to stay. The cost-effectiveness that these companies see due to various cost factors in countries like that of India, including low cost labor, is something that they just cannot overlook.

This is what a report in the TOI had to say -

Domestic business process outsourcing (BPO) units providing services to the American companies will not be affected by the proposed

decision of US President Barack Obama to discourage outsourcing by imposing taxes, said global consultancy firm Ernst & young.

“The companies which outsource business to third parties will not be impacted (by the proposed tax move),” said Ernst & Young Tax Director Rajendra Nayak. However, he added, the US companies which outsource services from their own arms including wholly-owned subsidiaries might face the heat of Obama’s tax proposal, which is yet to be approved by the US Congress.

According to the E&Y expert, the captive outsourcing units of Americans will be impacted by the proposal as it would be required to adhere to the regulations of the home country. On the other hand, the domestic Business Process Outsourcing units provide services to companies from different countries, including America, will primarily be governed by Indian laws

and may escape the impact of changes in the US tax laws, Nayak said.

The step, he said, is directed at encouraging the US companies to do business in the US. However, the success of this objective would depend on comparative advantage that locations like India provide over the loss of revenue because of taxes back home in the US, sources in the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said. The US companies would stop giving business to their subsidiaries in India only after evaluating if the benefit they have in India based on lower production costs

in the country is higher than the tax to be borne in the US itself, they said.

So if you look at the overall perspective, the impact of this policy on India is negligible. Hence we do not need to worry at this point in time and can be assured that indeed, “Outsourcing is here to stay”.