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.
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 -
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.
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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.
