The personality development programmes should be more optimistic...

I had recently attended a personality development programme *accidentally*. Yes accidentally..., because i had stopped attending them after my college days when we had over dosage of too many personality development programmes. And therefore i was even little careless in taking the trainer seriously , and was rather spending my time observing others.

Two people in room, made an interesting case to me. They made me feel that these programs can do more harm to people than do good

There was one man, who when entered the room was very energetic, full of enthusiasm and very social but when the program was about to end, he became very hyperactive, tensed, wanting to prove something and restless. The reason was just one psychometric analysis paper which showed him that his energy levels and self motivation was low and he needs improvement there.
The psychometric paper also showed that he is very honest and sincere...but then went unattended.

There was another lady in the room who sounded very authoritative from the beginning of the class. The trainer had asked each of us, what do u think are the qualities you want to change. I seriously dont' remember what i said :$, ya but this lady said 'i am very short tempered, and i want to change that'.

Sometime in the break i asked that lady if she has attended such personality development programs before. And she said from many many years she has been attending these kind of programs, and her main motive is to reduce her short temperament.

Well...since so many years what didn't happen, will it happen today ??!?! Are these personality programs helped her in anyways.
I think it has done her more harm. These programs have indirectly and silently hypnotised her by making her believe that she is short tempered. And now she is already in love with her short temperament and thinks that's her identity.
No human being, likes to leave his identity, irrespective of its good or bad. And nor will this lady do it.

It would have been great if the program had stressed more on persons strengths and told them how to capitalise on one's strengths instead of thinking so much on weaknesses. Who doesn't have weaknesses? If you are fat, people will say become thin. If you are thin, people will say you were cute when you were fat. If you are dark in complexion, then you need to become fair. if you are fair, then black is beautiful. So there is no end to it.

The best thing would be to fall in love with your strengths and make it your identity, and just be aware of your weaknesses.

(personality img source :http://lifeskills-consultancy.com/db5/00451/lifeskills-consultancy.com/_uimages/personality1.bmp)

Deligation at work ..for prestige or power or responsibility or empowerment?

As people grow up in career and get into a managerial or leadership postions, its pretty common to see them delegate there work to others. The delegators are given different names at different times; while most of the times they are called leaders ormanagers ...but many a times they are also called as lazy bones, incompetent or beurocratic bosses.

To be a balanced and successful leader or a manager, it becomes very important to know when to delegate and when not to.

In my opinion, delegation is to be done in following situations

• Delegate when ur an expert and now its others turn to be.
• Delegate when there is someone who needs to know that particular job better than u.
• Delegate when you think someone else in the team can do it better than you.
• Delegate when u want to empower people and create the next generation of leaders
• Delegate when you want to focus on new role, and ur looking for ur replacement

Delegation should not be done for the below reasons

• Dont delegate when its ur job, and u as well are learning to do it (Else you will become dumb in due course)
• Dont delegate, because u think ur the boss (If u have competent people around u, flat culture works better than bossism)
• Dont delegate, because u have to keep others happy (U as well need to be happy)
• Dont delegate, because u think thats the right way to show the power (U may totally spoil the job my giving it in wrong hands).
• Dont delegate because your boss thinks you should delegate (Use your own brains when its ur job)

dressing like a professional, talking like a professional,sitting like professional...list is endless

I was doing my shopping to select a T-Shirt for a relative who is in his later teens. And ofcourse the sales person did not know that i was shopping for someone else.

I selected a really cool, bright and sexy T-Shirt with something interesting written on it . The shopkeeper sees that and comes and tells me.."'Ma'm, you better take the other one (selects a pale yellow coloured dim T-shirt). This looks professional Ma'm on Office goers like you. What you have selected suits college goers only".
Grrrr..Well i forgave him because he did not know that i was shopping for someone else.

But that meant that, with or without reason, everyone feels that one needs to look so called 'professional' if he/she is working.

"Professionalism" is a word that refers to the way a person does his job. When we say he/she has done a professional work, it means he/she has worked like an expert in his field unlike a novoice. Other than this simple meaning, i don't think professionalism carries any other meaning.

But the corporate world uses this word so much to refer to everything around it more often, instead of referring to the way a person works.

How often do you hear the statement 'he/she has done a professional job'.?I remember reading this last in the formal appreciation letters that are given on completion of work. Never otherwise!

Now how often do we hear the below statements?
"Hey , that company folks are very professional in the way they talk."
"This lady looks very professional in the way she dresses"
"Hey, don't buy those shoes'they aren't professional looking"
ALMOST EVERYDAY:)

There are so many HR programs that happen on how to look professional. But i rarely see any program that talks on how to do a professional work.


Somehow the word professionalism is now used more to describe the way a person talks ,dresses up etc rather than the way he works:)


On a side note...

I was just searching the Net on "Why do we need dress code" and it took me to this page
http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis724/SpecialLibrariesHandbook/neal.htm#why.

It says "Many people will be turned off by staff members who dress sloppily or wear clothing with potentially offensive images or words. If a coworker proves to be a distraction, the other employees will have a hard time concentrating on their work. "

I agree with the above statement that distractions would exist if there were no dress codes. However i was also wondering how did we manage to complete such tough higher education during our teens , which is considered to be the most distractive period in life, with literally no dress codes.
Hats off to the teens:)

eehhh..does this mean we need more regulations around us as we grow old and grow responsible?

why do some people call some of their managers dumb in the IT industry

Today i attended a book review and topic of discussion was on leadership and management.
People in the room were trying to relate the things told in the book to some practical scenarios in IT/Technology industry.

One of the things the book was talking was about different levels of managers and the level of details and subject knowledge required at each level. So it said people at senior management level need not know subject details and most focus more on strategies.

In the same context one of the gentlemen raised a topic saying "if the manager doesn't know java, then the java developers reporting to him call him dumb. it's really wrong on the part of the developers because manager need not know it" . People were condemning this and were saying in such situations it's the java developer who is dumb and not the manager himself, because the manager need not know so much of things :)

Well, i actually agree to this to large extent that the manager need not know the details.

However why is someone being called dumb needs a different analysis.

Below is one of the common conversation between managers (the dumb one's) and subordinated

Manager: How much time will it take to develop a application which has feature X from MS Office, feature Y from the Drupal and feature Z from the Amazon e-commerce site.
Developer(hard core): it takes 6 months approx to develop.
Manager: hey come on...I thought it will not take more than 1 week. You have everything already available in MS office, Drupal and Amazon. You just need to look at them and write some java code to integrate the different features.

Developer: (whisper) Now how do i explain this guy that these are three different vendor applications without the source code.
$!^&@??? head bang bang bang...


Now wouldn't the developer call him dumb?

Many times managers do this Or rather any individual does this because he doesn't want people to take him for granted and show that he as well understands and has control of things.

It's like me going to a tailor and telling her ' i know this doesn't take more than 3 days then why are u taking a week to stitch' . Well in reality, i may really not know how much time it takes ;) , and that's just a trial and error strategy to ensure that the tailor doesn't fool me.

Similarly the problem with some of the managers who are considered dumb is that we sometimes try to interfere in areas where we are not comfortable.

And my personal opinion is that if we are in the IT industry and heading a set of technical people, then as a manager either we should have some basic knowledge of what's happening so that things don't go out of our control.
OR
we should respect and trust the words of our subordinates who knows things.

If we don't do this then obviously we would be called dumb.
Otherwise managers are the most important assets in a company:)