Came across a tweet by a respected TV journalist today:
r day should be a celebration of creative genius of india, not of armed forces might. fewer tanks, more music. gnight
I have heard people cribbing and providing their alternatives in the past also. “We should not spend money on games, the same could be used for the poor”, “why do film stars get awards, they should be given to intellectuals” and so on.
Mostly we rant about why we shouldn’t do the things that are happening and why we should shift our attention, money, focus to something else. It seems as though magically by doing that we would solve the seemingly bigger problems. How I wish it was so easy. How I wish that poverty would be eroded by not spending the money on games but by giving money to the poor.
Unfortunately it’s usually never a case of EITHER OR but almost always a case of AND. We must have games AND solve our poverty problems, the Republic Day must be a celebration of Armed forces might AND creative genius of India, awards must be given to intellectuals AND film stars.
Do you see yourself using Or in your workplace or are you using AND? Using AND can give shape to ideas and your suggestions stand a better chance of being accepted.
I came across Dan McCarthy’s blog recently. Dan is a practitioner in the field of leadership development for over 20 years and is currently the Manager of Leadership and Management Development at a Fortune "Great Place to Work", "Training Top 125", and "High Impact Learning" (HILO 80) company. He has a great blog on leadership that I would encourage you to subscribe to.
Dan wrote a great post Head’s Up – You are About to be Promoted or Fired where he shares why you might get promoted or fired. I think there’s also a third script: the status quo script. While you may not be fired for things you do (or don’t do), you may not get promoted either. Here’s what the script might be why you are not getting promoted:
Status Quo script:
I have some good news - you are keeping your job. Unfortunately we aren’t promoting you. Here’s why:
You are not seen as a leader amongst your peers. You do your job well enough. However you don’t inspire others, either within your team or amongst your peers. People respect you for doing your job with the best intentions and spirit but don’t really look up to you for taking them to the next level.
You don’t take initiatives. If there is a new opportunity, you don’t volunteer. You don’t seem to have new ideas. You usually wait to be assigned tasks and you are happy to do what is assigned to you, which you do well, no doubt. Perhaps you are content and satisfied with your current role.
You are not adding value to your current role. For example, your role is not just to create and present the report, but also work towards improving what you are presenting.
You are not visible. You don’t participate in company initiatives. You avoid official social gatherings. You don’t participate in cross functional teams. You shy away from taking credit for the good work you or your team does. You rarely share what you know, people don’t really see you as a node of reference.
You resist change. If there is talk of changing process or tools, you resist it. Your first reaction to initiatives is that it can't be done. It is too hard to convince you about the new ideas or changes and too much time needs to be spent with you to onboard you. People see you as an impediment to new ideas.
A question was asked on Twitter for some tips on running better meetings. I sent out a series of tweets and then added a few more to make this blog post.
Here are my tips for better meetings:
Question the need: Ask yourself, do you even need the meeting? Do what you can over email to avoid meetings.
Have an agenda: Not points to discuss but decisions to be made. If the meeting is to review progress, make sure you have status against goals.
Keep'em short: Schedule shorter meetings. Force participants to take decisions in the short time.
Review actions: Review status of actions in last meeting. If no action for 2 meetings, question if you really need the action.
Have the right participants: What are you expecting each participant to contribute? Do you have the decision makers in the participants? Do the participants know what's expected from each of them?
Summarize actions: Not just summarizing the actions but also be specific, who is required to do what and by when.
Avoid gimmicks: Just stay focused and have the meeting. Don’t have silly gimmicks that are supposed to make meetings more effective. You don’t really want to start measuring meeting effectiveness, passing tokens etc. Hey, you’ll probably end up in having more meetings deciding the gimmicks.
Who is running the meeting: Identify who is really running the meeting? The meeting chair should help participants stay focused on the meeting agenda.
Be prepared: with your agenda, data and decision points. Better preparation means shorter meetings.
Follow the hygiene: of being on time and stopping on time.
Seth Godin talks about quieting the lizard brain within us and finishing what we started. He says thrash the ideas up front, don’t get scared about shiping the product and start thrashing the idea later in the development stage. Of course, we also have the analysis praralysis syndrome where we might spend too much time in analyzing the idea without ever starting it. You don’t finish what you don’t start, right.
Okay, so basically what everyone is saying is move your blooming part-of-your-anatomy and get on with delivering on your great idea. Sure analyze (thrash) the idea at the start but don’t get stuck there. And then once you’ve started it, don’t start thrashing (analyzing/critiquing) the product just before you have the deliver it.
Swaminathan Moothy of Society for Technical Communication (STC) invited me to speak at their regional conference in Chennai. I shared what I think is needed to be a successful writer. I spoke about skills companies are looking for in a technical writer, tips on how to manage technical writing projects, and career options for a technical writer. It was quite a learning experience. The audience was a group of technical writers with varied experience and I got to learn new things. Here’s my presentation on being a successful technical writer.
This is a guest post by S Ranganathan. I got a chance to interact with Ranganathan during a leadership development program that I attended at ISB. Ranga, as he would like to be called, is a regular Executive Coach at ISB where he partners with different trainers in their Global Leadership Program. Ranga holds a Post Graduate degree in Management from IIM Bangalore preceded by a Post Graduate degree in Mathematics from IIT Chennai. Ranga is the Founder-Director of SymIndia Training and Consultancy Pvt. Ltd.—an organization based in Bangalore that caters to the high-end Consulting and Training needs in both Technology and Management Domains. He can be contacted at ranga [at] symindia [dot] com.
What is the difference between Control and Influence?
This question was triggered when I read the following statement in a book recently:
“Our main source of stress stems from our desire to controlthings around us, people around us, situations around us and above all control ourselves”.
I have been training many professionals on Leadership wherein the main leadership competence we discuss is Influence. The above question is indeed worth exploring in this context.
Before we come to the differences between Control and Influence, let’s notice that both of them have some commonalitytoo:
- To challenge the current situation (than accept status-quo mutely)
- To cause a change in the thinking/behavior of others
- High belief in oneself
- High energy levels
Now, let’s focus on the differencesbetween Control and Influence: Here is how I see it… when Person-A is interacting with Person-B…
Aspects to Consider
Control
Influence
Verbal Language
Judgmental, Comparing, Extreme
Balanced, Apt
Tonality of the Person-A
Threat, Command
Care, Respect
Emotions Triggered in Person-B
Fear, Guilt, Greed (Stress comes from here!)
Joyful Motivation
Final state of mind for Person-B
Insecurity, Helplessness (in extreme cases even Revengeful)
Trust and Security
State of Mind of Person-A (if he/she experiences failure in the attempt )
Anger, Irritation (Stress comes from here!)
Acceptance, Introspection
Communication between the two persons
One-way, Instructional
Two-way, Discussing
Possible techniques used by Person-A
Shouting, Closing channels of communication, Walk-outs, Broken-record (on final decision) (Stress comes from here!)
Polite persuasions, Objective and data-based, Open channels of Communication, Broken-record (on outlook and analysis)
Timing chosen by Person-A
Appropriate moment for Person-A, many times last-minute!!
Chosen appropriate moment for Person-B, Early in cycle
Information shared
Very selective
Open to any information
Final state desired by Person-A
As ‘required’ by Person-A!!
Outcome of open discussion
Attitude of Person-A to „home-work‟ to be done before dialog
I recently discovered how I can effectively use LinkedIn to find potential candidates for recruitment. I simply update my status message with what I am looking for and get responses from interested candidates. Okay, I know this isn’t really new but hey, it’s new for me. Anyway this post isn’t about this discovery of mine.
I received a few responses to my status updates. These were from people I know and have worked with in the past. Unfortunately, a few of the people who responded did not have an updated LinkedIn profile. Their profile simply listed the jobs they held but had not details about what they did in each job or their achievements. Since I knew these people personally, I had a good idea of their profiles and the jobs they have held since they moved on. However I possibly couldn’t forward their profiles to my other colleagues because of their incomplete profiles. Lost opportunity!
I recommend that you update your LinkedIn profile with details of what you did in each job you held. Include your achievements too. Consider LinkedIn profile your updated and most recent résumé, even if you are not actively looking for a job. And do remember to write a Summary and Specialities too.
If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, simply add me to your network. On my LinkedIn profile, click Add Manish to Your Network, select Other and put in my email manishmo [at] hotmail [dot] com. Please do provide some introduction about yourself in your initial connecting message.
I recently read this in one of the blogs that I follow (which unfortunately I can’t remember, apologies).
Great work is not recognized by managers, exceptional work is. Great work is expected from you anyway.
This is so true. I have heard many people complain that they got no recognition for the work they did. In some cases they said they got no recognition for the great work they did.
So how can we do exceptional work that will be noticed and recognized? Well, to start with stop focusing on getting recognition and start focusing on doing an exceptional job. So many of us spend hours worrying about not being recognized for our great work. I suggest we start worrying about doing an exceptional job. Recognition WILL follow. Exceptional work never goes unnoticed and consistent exceptional work is ALWAYS recognized. True, there may be projects where you felt you did an exceptional job but didn’t get recognized for it. However if you spend time worrying about it, you will take your focus off the next project and end up doing, well, a great job but not an exceptional job. So stay focused and don’t let small disappointments come in your way of doing an exceptional job all the time.
I recently came across a question posted on the eCube LinkedIn forum that I responded to. While the question was how a person in between jobs could keep their instructional design skills up to date, I think it is important even for those with the jobs to keep their skills up to date.
How can an experienced Instructional Designer with very limited experience in current instructional design software tools update their skills in order to be recognized and considered as a candidate for e-Learning positions? How does a person in transition keep their instructional design skills up to date in order to effectively compete for instructional design jobs in today's job market?
Start reading a lot of blogs by other experts and connect with other learning professionals through your comments. It is always hard to know which blogs to follow. Here are the blogs that I follow, or you could also browse through the blogroll on this site.
Twitter is another great tool for connecting with others. This will give you an insight into what's happening in the industry and help you stay up to date.
If you are up to it (and I strongly recommend that you do make an effort), my advice would be to start writing a blog to articulate your learning. Your blog will be a useful showcase in your job interviews (I am of course assuming that you will write about learning/instructional design).
I would also recommend that you learn various tools used in elearning. These tools are usually easy enough to get started and learn on your own. You could easily work with the demo versions of the latest tools and to get your hands dirty.
And if you are indeed in between jobs and want to stay up to date, I would advice you to start picking up small freelance assignments. No better way to stay in touch with what's happening in the industry by actually being hands on.
Welcome to Learn and Lead. I write about learning, leadership, performance, management, elearning, training, blogging, tools, trends. Looking forward to your valuable comments.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by my employers and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of my employers.
