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The complexity of collaboration!

Leave a Comment / Blog, Careers and Concerns / HR Footprints / 09/10/2014

In our previous blog “Collaboration.. a tool to achieve aspirations” we have discussed about the importance of collaboration and its definition in the view of an individual. But what makes collaboration complex? What can organizations and leaders do to instill collaboration? Lets explore the complexity of collaboration! What makes it so complex? The complexity lies in the fact that individuals who do not know each other and who have their personal goals , come together to perform a common business in an organization. The extent of diversity in their skills, experiences, styles of working and the likely conflict each other’s individual goals makes collaboration tough to achieve and sustain. If you look at the scenario closely, the business environment is more prone to break collaboration than to induce it. Thus we have a scenario here where business needs collaboration to deliver customer service and individuals bring their diverse personal goals. What can organizations and leaders do? Since collaboration is a business necessity, organizations need to take measures to instill collaboration despite all the diverse individual needs. Some of the approaches that leaders in organizations adopt are: 1. Conducting team building events: This is the most widely used method, which may have instant impact but may not sustain. 2. Creating cross-functional groups: This is a powerful approach to bring together diverse people who otherwise may not come together to collaborate. 3. Team rewards: When designed well, team rewards create a ‘reason’ for individuals collaborate because they see that by winning together, the gain is for each individual as well. Thus reward binds the team together! 4. Job rotation: By moving people across functions, organizations create greater sensitivity and respect for each other. When I do not know what your job is, I may erroneously tend to overestimate what I do. Similarly, I underestimate what others do. Through job rotations, we can break this perception. 5. Knowledge sharing sessions: A quicker method to create mutual understanding is a structured knowledge-sharing session. Colleagues and team members can share knowledge about their job with others. To deal with the complexity of collaboration, leaders play a very significant role. Without any external stimuli from leaders and organizational systems it is far too hard to expect individuals to collaborate! Excerpts from the article – Complexity of collaborationBy: Dr.Raj, Published in HR Mirror, Hans India.Follow Dr.Raj on Twitter @drraj29

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You shape your own career!

Leave a Comment / Blog, Careers and Concerns / HR Footprints / 30/05/2014

In our previous blog (“Who owns your career” published on May 28th 2014), we came across Virendra, a senior professional with more than eighteen years of experience and Nidhi, a fresher who are worried about the future and visibility of their career. Their main concern is “what will others (the top management) to do their career?”. The question is why wait for others to take interest on our career? Instead, shape your own career and drive it. To get rid of the passive approach and to take charge of your career, ask yourself some key questions: 1. What do I look for in my career? 2. What are my medium and long term career goals? 3. What do I need to learn to reach my goals? 4. Who can help me in my learning? 5. How do I build professional relationships? 6. How can I build my resume – not merely write it? Many people think that they know the answers to these questions already; but the truth is far from it. As a quick check, try writing down your thoughts on the above questions; you will realize how they make us think – not once, but several times! Do not expect to get the answers ‘right’ in the first instance; in fact, there is nothing like the right answer. It is a process of gaining clarity about your career. Once you are clear about yourself, you can use this insight and initiate action. You will know what to ask. You will know how to make career decisions. For example, if Virendra is clear about the answers to these questions, he will know what to discuss with his boss, instead of getting frustrated that no one is caring for his career. Similarly, Nidhi can listen to the response from the interview panel on her role and future career growth and then decide if it is in sync with what she wants to do. Career occupies more than sixty percent of our active life; we cannot leave it to fate or to others; take charge and shape your career! Excerpts from the article – Who Owns Your CareerBy: Dr.Raj, Published in HR Mirror, Hans India.Follow Dr.Raj on Twitter @drraj29.

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Beyond just Time Management!

Leave a Comment / Blog, Careers & Concerns / HR Footprints / 09/04/2014

In our previous blog, we met Raghav, who is looking for a time management course. Like many of us , Raghav is also facing a challenge of doing many things but not finding time. The key question is: Does this really solve the problem? Let us look at some of the key reasons why we generally struggle to find time to do many things. Time management is basically just managing yourself. As you read through this list, it will be useful to reflect if any of them apply in your case. Setting too many things to do: It is good to be ambitious, but it is also important to realize that we will always have more ideas than time to execute. It has been proved that even if you set more than ten goals, you will still be able to achieve only two or three of them. Once you are done with those goals, you can take up the next set of goals. There is no point in getting frustrated that you do not find time to perform all at the same time. Unable to Say “No”: Once again, it is good to be flexible and extending a helping hand to anyone who seeks support from us. But be watchful if you are taking up those requests because you are unable to say ‘no’ them. While trying to please others, you are building pressure on yourself. Then you come plain that there is no time. Wanting to do a perfect job: Doing a perfect job is a perfect trait in terms of intention. But is it practical? You can track the time spent to perfect a job; the core of the job would have been complete in a reasonable time; but it is your desire to make it perfect that takes enormously more time. Is it worth it? Should every job require such perfection? I do not mean to say that we need to execute a task with mediocrity. The question to ponder upon is if you are spending disproportionate time perfecting a job. Jumping from one to the other: There are some people who take pride in saying that they get bored working on one job at a time and therefore they keep moving from one task to another while keeping every task half done. At the end of the day, they again wonder how they could not find time to finish the work. Postponing the difficult job: Some tasks test our capacity to perform. They call for advanced thinking and some more application of mind than the routine ones. The tendency usually is to postpone such ‘difficult’ tasks and instead fill the day with more familiar ones. A stage comes when the difficult task keeps staring at us. A quick glance at the above reasons reveal that finding time to do things is more to do with managing self; by undoing the above habits, one can prepare self to get the focus back and achieve much more in the available time. After all, time is a constant number; what we make out of it is in our hands. This article was published in: HR Mirror, Hans India. Follow Dr. Raj on Twitter @drraj29

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Manage yourself to manage time

Leave a Comment / Careers & Concerns, Personal And Professional / HR Footprints / 07/04/2014

This article was published in: HR Mirror, Hans India. Follow Dr. Raj on Twitter @drraj29 The other day I had an interesting request over a phone call. It was from Raghav, a 35-year old mid-level manager in a growing company. As he started speaking to me, he had a slight hesitation in his voice. Raghav said, “Ideally, I would have liked to meet you in person and discuss my problem. But I hardly find time to do so” Me: “No problem Raghav! If you think we can discuss your problem over the call, I am perfectly fine with it. Please go ahead. What is your problem?” Raghav: “That is my problem; not having enough time. I wanted to take your advice on any good time management course that I can attend. Can you please suggest one?” Me: “I can surely look around and suggest a good course on time management; before doing that, I wanted to know if your problem will be solved just by attending a course. Will you learn to manage time or to manage yourself ?” Raghav was silent and I knew he was thinking. It is not only Raghav, but many of us face the same challenge; the challenge of doing many things but not finding the time. We look for a course that teaches how to manage time; we want to buy props like schedulers, calendars or other gadgets hoping that they will help us to manage time. The key question, however, is: Do they really solve our problem? It is good to be ambitious, but it is also important to realize that you will always have more ideas than time to execute. Once you achieve one goal, you can take up the next set of goals. There is no point in grumbling that you do not have the time to perform all the tasks. Keep tracking this space to have a look at some of the key reasons why we struggle to find time to do many things.

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How to take feedback from your seniors?

Leave a Comment / Careers & Concerns / HR Footprints / 08/03/2014

Below are different approaches for receiving feedback from the manager during the review session. Evaluate for yourself which one is the right way. Let us take a close look at three youngsters who work for a multinational corporation (MNC). The MNC has presence across the globe including India. They consider January to December as a performance year and financial year also. Accordingly, they conduct the individual performance assessments during the month of January for the previous year that ended in December. As per the process, for the year of 2013,the performance reviews were conducted in January 2014 and all the three youngsters that we are discussing here received feedback on their performance. For one of them, this was their first review ever in her career while the other two had experienced it once before. Sara: She joined the company about ten months ago from campus. After a 45-day training, she was given a proper role and specific goals. Sara’s manager had a review session, which was her first formal review. Her manager went through each goal, asked her what she did well and what she missed. She was compelled to reflect and admit the mistakes that she committed. He asked her what she would like to improve in her performance and what support she wants from him. While Sara was very tensed up at the beginning of the session, she slowly got into the flow of discussion and felt very comfortable. More so, her manager made the session more of a self-reflection than preachy. When she looked at her own performance objectively, she realized her mistakes and asked for help to improve. Overall, it was a tense but comfortable session for Sara. Rohit: He has been working in the company for about twenty months now and this happened to be his second review. The familiarity with the process was surely an advantage for Rohit. He particularly recalled how dumbstruck he was during his first review session last year. He still curses himself for not speaking up during the last year’s performance review, which he believes caused lower salary increment. When he was preparing for his second review during January 2014, Rohit decided that he should express more and talk out all his problems. Internally, the anxiety started building up as the feedback session was nearing. When he finally went in to meet his manager, Rohit could not execute his plans at all. Looking at Rohit’s anxiety, his manager made him drink water, talked something about his family and tried to put him at ease. The discussion then went over each goal and how Rohit had fared. Manager was very specific and pointed out the areas where Rohit missed out. He even asked Rohit to reflect and see the reason for drop in performance. Rohit’s anxiety was turning into anger, though he could not say anything on the spot. He simply agreed to all that manager said and walked out of the session. His colleagues came over and asked curiously about the session. Suddenly Rohit’s anger found an expression and he blurted out how biased the manager was. He even said that these feedback sessions are useless and they are only meant to reduce the increments. His colleagues remained there as mere spectators. Raghu: Raghu was quite cool and was not much worried about the upcoming performance review session. When his buddies enquired how he could maintain such calm, his reply was that his strategy to tackle the manager is ready. Of course, he did not reveal the strategy to the overzealous colleagues! From the start of the review session, Raghu took charge of the discussion. He went through each goal and explained to his manager why certain things could not be done due to lack of support from others. He refused to accept any blame onto himself and even suggested to manager that he should have a feedback session with the other poor performing colleagues. Raghu used aggression as the best defense and felt victorious. Are they doing right? It is true that every person may not approach feedback session the same way. How do you think the above three youngsters are looking at feedback? Is their approach to performance review right? Place yourself in that situation and think about it! Watch out this space for more discussion on feedback sessions. This article was published in: HR Mirror, Hans India Follow Dr. Raj on Twitter @drraj29

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How to lay career foundations

Leave a Comment / Careers and Concerns / HR Footprints / 07/11/2013

“When you are equipped with the clarity of your long-term goal along with the model behaviours, you are surely laying strong foundations to your career!” Career and life planning are never easy. There is no one-way of going about it either! It is therefore interesting and intriguing to listen to varying perspectives about career foundations. Such diverse views naturally induce a sense of ambiguity leading to dilemmas as to what to do and not do. While there are many career dilemmas, let us discuss a few here. To plan career or not to plan: Some are of the view that career happens, you cannot make it. They believe that career is a series of opportunities that you choose to pick up as you pursue your journey. Such school of thought does not believe in setting long term goals and working towards them. Instead, they recommend constant vigil on the environment to spot every emerging opportunity and then assess if it is to your liking. For example, take the case of Dev who did his graduation in Biology, then moved over to do Chartered Accountancy and after a few years moved into HR role. It is hard to believe that all this was planned before. Dev kept constantly looking at what interests him at various stages of career and made the moves. Fortunately, all the moves worked for Dev. What if they didn’t? Concept of free will (the opportunity to decide at will what to do and take it as it comes by) sounds liberating in the first instance; however, it may end up as too much of trial and error which may derail career. As the popular saying goes, “If you don’t know where you want to go, you can take any road”. However, career and life are not so aimless, isn’t it? Such experimentation without a goal will not help in shaping the career. Let us revisit Dev’s case once again. After switching over to Chartered Accountancy from Biology, what if he did not succeed? Would it not be a waste of precious years? Several people are there who struggle to switch the tracks after initially starting somewhere. Some are able to do it successfully like Dev while many fail to make the switch. Therefore, it is prudent to think through as to what one wishes to do in the long-run and accordingly shape the career. The cynics may say that not all the plans will succeed. That is very true. However, that is not a good enough reason not to plan career at all. Here are the specific suggestions to resolve this dilemma: Believe that a long-term career goal is a good starting point. Remember that an appropriate career goal is one that should motivate you continuously; discover what drives you in your career. Develop a plan to work towards realizing the goal. One path may not take you to the goal; but that should not make you change your goal; pursue alternate paths. If the results do not seem to coming even after persistent efforts, be open to re-look at your goal. Seek external help if need be! To have a role model or not: Some achievers around us awe many of us. They inspire us so much so that we want to become like them. At the same time, there is a dilemma if one should have role models or one should evolve independently. Once again, the answer to this question is not a clear black and white. It is certainly good to identify a person or persons who inspire us. That will constantly motivate us. However, in my personal view, picking one person as the role model and wanting to become like him or her may not be desirable. Instead, look for the characteristics in them that you wish to emulate. In such a case, it is possible to have different people that you adore for different virtues. Instead of role models, you try capturing model behaviours. You will then emerge as an independent person with combined strength of all those characteristics. However, ensure that you emulate features that are beyond physical appearance. It is also important to ensure that the set of role models will guide you towards your long-term career goals. When you are equipped with the clarity of your long-term goal along with the model behaviours, you are surely laying strong foundations to your career! Article published in: HR Mirror Hans India Follow us on Twitter @hrfootprints

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