How do effective people manage their energy? Taking Responsibility

 How do effective people manage their energy? Taking Responsibility

(Execution Excellence -"Ability to get things done" Series)
 

 

We are discussing the mindset and practices of highly effective people for being at a high energy level in the workplace, through which they get the power to influence others to get things done. In line with that, we have discussed the importance of self-compassion and starting the day with leisure and rituals.

The next practice we can observe in the most effective people is taking responsibility and stopping blaming game.

The definition of responsibility is the mental ability to respond to a situation.

When we confront an adverse situation in the workplace, either we own the problem or blame others for being in the situation.



When we own the situation, we tend to find solutions by fixing the process or educating the people. In this process, we eventually near to solutions or solve the problem. When we are part of the solutions, we feel elated and tend to be at a high energy level thereon.

Whereas, when we blame others, others find a reason to defend or reciprocate the blaming. In this process, we tend to be upset, angry, helpless, and, in turn, feel low energy levels.

The choice of taking responsibility help.

How do people demonstrate responsibility in adverse situations?

One of my bosses is very sharp in observation; the moment he realizes something is wrong in the situation due to some people, he immediately responds with the statement, " Ok, what needs to be done now?

The statement is powerful and turns all the people to look toward the solutions instead of looking for someone to blame. He sets the culture of taking responsibility in the organization rather than creating chaos through blaming and arguing. That is the power of taking responsibility.

To get a sense of responsibility, suggest experimenting next time when you confront adverse workplace situations.

Taking responsibility will give us a higher energy level than being inactive or blaming others. Awareness and practice help us to become more energetic in the workplace.

Have a great week ahead.

Expectation Management- Accountability Vs.Responsibility

 Expectation Management-

Accountability Vs.Responsibility
(Execution Excellence -"Ability to get things done" Series)

 

We have discussed the importance of being aware of key stakeholders' expectations related to expectation management. One way of being aware of the role expectation is getting clarity between accountability vs. responsibility.

In practice, we interchangeably use the term accountability and responsibility. There is a difference in the terminology, and how we use them to understand the expectation of our role in a professional setup will help us to deliver effectively.

Accountability refers to RESULT or end expectation, and responsibility refers to ACTIVITIES. In any professional dealing, others expect us to be accountable rather than responsible, even though it is not explicitly expressed.

How will this understanding help us?

When you relate your job with reference to more accountability than responsibility, it will enhance your understanding of expectations. You tend to improve your execution capabilities when you are clearer on expectations.

For example, assume you are the finance head of the organization. The key accountability expected from the position is to ensure positive cash flow, and all the activities are subsets of this accountability. When you know your ultimate accountability or result expectation, you will tend to do an effective job rather than when you relate your role only to activities like account keeping, generating statements, analysis etc. When you relate more to activities, likely suboptimal performance only will happen.

Similarly, if you are the procurement head, the key expectation is to ensure undisturbed material supply and cost optimization in material procurement. The other activities or responsibilities are a subset of accountability.

You may relate to your current role and articulate the highest expectation of the role.

When we are not aligned in expectations between key stakeholders and us, say, our boss or customer, disappointment occurs.

Some effective leaders, as i observed, will always relate their work and their team's work with an accountability perspective. When they have clarity, they will always communicate or connect with the team from a result delivery point of view and minimize the micromanagement on the activities level.

The clarity on accountability vs. responsibility is vague in many organizations, and it is the prime job of the managers/leaders to make clarity and practice when dealing with others.

This clarity on expectation setting helps to execute things well.

Have a great week ahead!

You can delegate a task, not accountability!

You can delegate a task, not accountability!
 

One of the responses for last week's discussion on delegation skill is “After I delegate the task to my colleague or team member and if he/ she does not execute the task as expected, how can I be responsible?”.

We need to understand the difference between responsibility and accountability. Accountability is someone ultimately accountable for RESULT, whereas Responsibility is someone responsible for the EFFORT or PROCESS.

Accountability is outcome-based; responsibility is process-based.

In an organizational context, when you are delegating some tasks to someone, you are just partially offloading your task to someone with empowerment to complete the task. Still, ultimately you are accountable for the result of the task. You cannot pass the ownership of the result to others. That is why we need to understand that delegation is not just the allocation of duty to others.

Effective delegation is a combination of
 Knowing what to delegate+ To whom to delegate+ Education+ Guiding

For example, as production in charge, you are just delegating the task to your reports, but you are accountable for the delivery and not your team. You are delegating the responsibility only, not accountability. Finally, you are accountable for your team’s performance.

We need to understand that the art of delegation itself is a responsibility, not just outsourcing the task to someone. When we own that responsibility, we become master the art of delegation skill!

How to display respect to others?

Improving Communication in the workplace
 

Displaying Respect 

As discussed last week, preparing others for listening is the first step towards effective communication, and one of the processes is    " displaying respect to others".

How you can display respect to others?:

There are many ways you can show respect to another person; one of the powerful methods is “ Make another person feel good in your presence” through your gestures.

How you are treating another person will make him feel good about himself, and his listening ability improves when you interact with him.

My experience on the other person’s gesture and my self-esteem as happened some years back.

My colleague and I went to our HR manager to discuss some people-related issues. Before the meeting, we checked his availability. When we enter his room, he was busy on his laptop, and he did not ask us to sit. Despite that we sat for more than 10 minutes, he did not have the courtesy to ask us to wait by stating his urgent work. In between his typing, he instructed something to us regarding the people issues, and we were not in a position to listen, and after a while, we left. In this entire process, he never looked at us, and we felt bad about it.

As we understood his urgency, we expected that he could have requested us to wait for a few minutes, and once he finished the task in the laptop, he could have closed his laptop and had given undivided attention. Those small gestures might have made us feel good.

It is natural to neglect others due to urgent work, but it does not matter for the other person. It is essential how another person is feeling in your presence. It looks like common sense and soft aspect, but that makes much difference in other people’s mind. If you do not make another person “feeling good,” you are not preparing him/her ready for your subsequent communication.

If you are rude, always reacting and unappreciative, then people may not feel self-esteemed in your presence. When people are not feeling good enough in your presence, their listening ability also reduces.

Hence, first, make other person feeling good with you by giving respect through your gestures.

Just be aware of your gestures as we need to evolve as a good human being.

Other aspects of effective communication let us discuss next week!

Improving communication in the workplace ---Owning responsibility for EFFECTIVE communication

Effective communication is not what and how much you are communicating to others; it is how well your purpose of communication is met.
 
For example, you are instructing your colleague to complete a task in a specific manner. The communication would be referred to as effective communication only when your colleague also understands the intention of your communication and completes the task as per that instruction.
 
Owning responsibility for  EFFECTIVE communication

Our general tendency is that when the task is not completed as per our intended communication, we use to blame others for their misunderstanding or incapability.
 
The first step in improving your communication skill is to accept the responsibility for your communication process. It is not others misunderstand your communication. Still, you have not yet mastered the communication skill to modify your communication process depends upon the others. Since each one is different due to background and exposure, there is always a chance for misinterpretation.
 
How you are customizing your communication style to suit different people, and the environment is all about mastering the communication process.
 
For example, as business head, if you can communicate your organization goal to your second level management team and the operating team such a way that they understand in the same way and emotionally connect with the organization, then you are an effective communicator. It requires effort in mastering the communication process. That responsibility lies with you.
 
The point is that each one of us has more potential to improve the communication process, and first, we need to own the responsibility of effective communication than pointing others. When you own, you are open to learning and experiment on the communication process and techniques.
 
Let us discuss further on the communication process and techniques!

Leading self ( Owning responsibility)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The Third  factor to improve strengthening inner world is “personal  responsibility.”

When you search the meaning of responsibility in dictionary or Google, you get the answer as a duty to do something or the ability to respond to the situation. Those are outward focused.
From a leadership perspective, my view is personal responsibility is a feeling of ownership about something. That could be your life, your family, your team, your organization, your work or about the world. It is more of Inward oriented.
Most of the personal problems are due to lack of ownership feeling at an individual level only.

How does personal responsibility enhance your internal strength?

When you have a feeling of ownership about something when a problem occurs, you try to find solutions, and in this process, you are giving yourself towards solutions and internally you are feeling safe, comfort and peace.
Alternatively, When you do not own something, when the problem happens, you tend to blame or complain about the situation, and in this process, either the problem aggravates, or you are undergoing stress within yourself.


For example, 
When you own your work, if somebody points out some problem, you try to correct the problem. In case if you are not owning, you try to defend or put the problem on somebody.

If you own your team or organization, you try to educate your team member when you find fault with their performance. Else, you blame them or complain.

If you feel you are responsible for your family harmony, you try to bring solutions for relationship conflicts; else you complicate further by arguing and complaining.


The question to ask yourself is how much ownership you are taking for all life aspects and you can see the correlation of your internal strength!

Let us discuss further.

Learn to Lead - Leading Self

As discussed, the first step in personal development process Is leading self or personal leadership.
Personal leadership precedes everything. If we do not learn to lead self, we will be finding difficult to manage others, organizational roles and responsibilities, and even family life.

What does “leading self” mean?

Leading self-means being aware of yourself, your emotions, beliefs, values and how you are effectively managing yourself. It is more of strengthening your inner world. The quality of your inner world would reflect externally as your outlook, appearance, tone, and style of carrying out your activities.

Hence, leading self-means how you are strengthening your quality of inner world.simple.

If your inner world is positive, vibrant, peaceful, then our external personality will also be more positive, energetic and pleasant to you and others.     
    
How to strengthen the inner world?

Irrespective your upbringing and environment, with little awareness and practice, you can strengthen your inner mindset, and thereby you lead yourself. It is all about keeping your mindset in a positive mode.

Given below the factors contributing to strengthening your inner world.

1. Self-image
2. Personal responsibility
3. Self-discipline
4. Being grateful
5. Faith

When we enhance our perspectives on the above factors, eventually we can strengthen the inner mindset.

Let us discuss each factors next week. 

Being proactive and cool

In personal and professional life, everyone has some primary responsibilities which can be done only by self. When we do not execute the primary responsibility on time; the consequence may be more stress or pain. Also by nature, any delayed response will consume more time and energy.For example, 

As an individual, if you are not spending time proactively on taking care of your health, any way you need to spend time when you get sick.

As a business head, If you are not spending time proactively on planning your customer orders delivery at the beginning of the month, any way you have to spend at the end of the month in firefighting mode which more stressful.

As a leader, If you are not spending time with your team on developing, mentoring and teaching the skills, any way you need to spend time when they make costly mistakes in their execution.

As a parent, If you are not spending time with your kids during  childhood on values development, any way you need to spend time in future when they slip on the life values which is more pain

The point is that proactiveness is required at least on your prime responsibilities. Else, any reactive time spending would affect the quality of life. Hence, be aware of your prime responsibility and be proactive!

How do you respond to feedback?

Feedback from well-wishers, matured people are generally are genuine and for continuous improvement only. However, in reality, our mind responds to feedback in different ways and this response makes a difference in the performance. Generally, we respond to feedback in  three ways. 

For example, your boss or colleague or even your customer is pointing out some gap in your behavior or performance, you may choose any one of the below responses and that response determines  your further growth from the feedback.

Taking too personally:
 Feeling guilty and becoming sad about the feedback. The consequence may be your self-esteem may go down and you may be cribbing about the feedback. No Improvements on the corrective action or forward thinking and in turn, no progress in performance. 

Defending to  the feedback giver: 

Defending your position with justification to feedback giver. Likely, you may win the argument as well, but you may lose the sight of the truth of feedback. No improvements on the corrective action or forward thinking and in turn, no progress in performance.

Analyzing the feedback with rational approach:

 Listening and seeking further clarity from the feedback giver. Getting into introspecting. In this process, your mind tends to analyze the fact and accept the need for corrective action for growth. 

The point is that the choice of response you are choosing to feedback determines the progress, Feedback does not. 

Just be aware of your response! 

Business model with compassion and profitability

   Inspiring video about a person who started from scratch after retirement and built a great , profitable organization with more compassion to poor people. It talks about Vision, Values, Business model, Spirituality, Possibilities, and Compassion.

   Moreover, while most of us striving for operational excellence through lean system thinking in manufacturing segment, they had been practicing lean operation/ service management and brought efficiency. Actually, that efficiency made their service more affordable and competitive .One key insight leadership is all about vision and execution.

Thought that it is very  inspiring , learning experience and hence  sharing the link below

https://t.co/2HnW47rN81

Hope you enjoy this video…

Response to adversity

“Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it”—Lou Holtz

       Everyone  goes through adversity in life at some point of time. What makes the difference between average and successful people is the interpretation or learning from such adversity  or  experiences. The way we are looking  at our experiences and taking further action only determines the growth.

       We may come across situations  wherein  our decision results in heavy financial loss or damages the reputation among peers or customers, etc.. Now  we  have three choices  which decide our  ability to overcome the adversity.

Choice of response 1:

    Feeling guilty and becoming sad about the  decision and the result. The consequence may be your self esteem may go down and you may be cribbing. Self pity will be increasing and no corrective or forward thinking will take place 

Choice of response 2:

    Start defending your position with justification. You tend to build logics to justify your  decision  or stand and in this process, you  refuse  to look at the truth. No learning takes place to improve further.

Choice of response 3:

     Take pause ,reflect on the decision making process and the analyse the impact .This may lead you to find more truth about mistakes done . Your mind tends to analyze the fact and accept the need for corrective action for growth. 

The choice response that you are choosing to any  adversity  or experiences  determines the further growth. Hence, be aware of your response to any adversity. 

The shift from “whom” to “what”

“Accept responsibility .Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else”.-- Les Brown

       Whenever we face any problem both family and professional environment, most of us  tend to blame the environment and cite the root cause of the problem as parents, friends, society, teachers, boss, colleagues, school, college or something else other than self. In this process, temporarily we may feel comfortable.The moment we blame and push the responsibility to others, the mind never attempts to find  alternatives  to overcome the problem.

       What is needed in that moment is a slight shift in mindset towards taking personal responsibility.When we accept personal responsibility for the outcome of the event, we tend to find out the solution. Moreover, we will not have the habit of blaming and complaining others. In addition, when we take personal responsibility, we take control of the situation. This mindset is one of the qualities of leadership. 

        For example, in an organization, when the problem comes in, most of the time, tendency to shift the focus on WHOM, the moment we shift the focus on people, we close our thinking process to solutions approach. Instead, when we shift the focus on “what,” mind cools down to think of solutions.

       It may be difficult for some people having this mindset naturally, but it is possible with AWARENESS and your life will be more rewarding as you are perceived  as a solution provider than problem creator.
        
        Hence, the key is to  accept the personal responsibility of life events, which is the first step towards achieving Growth!

Leadership Insight

You may be aware of E. Sreedharan, a man behind in modern metro rail transportation system in  India and popularly known as “Metro Man".His contribution as technocrats who modernized the country’s railway transportation to global standards. It could be Konkan rail lines which is known as one of the engineering excellence, or could be a modern metro rail  in Delhi. While most of us  were skeptical about metro solutions, the success of Delhi metro paved way for metro solutions in more than 20 cities in India.

Under his leadership, Delhi metro lines were completed before the due date and budget. His project management practices are  case studies  for aspiring project managers and business school students.

On understanding his background, now the leadership insight from him. 

Whenever a query asked about his lifetime achievement, everyone expects the answer could be some of his best work, like Konkan, Pamban bridge, or metro line etc. But he used to reply, “The important achievement in my life is I could able to instill the confidence to my engineers that enabled them to work competently”.

According to me, this is a very profound statement on leadership  and it is required in every organization that looks for transformation. As a leader of  an organization or our team, our primary  responsibility is showing the possibilities for the team, instill the confidence and backup them in any circumstances. People come from different background, level of competency  and confidence level and leader’s  job is to enhance the hope, positivity and confidence in them to deliver the best!.That is leadership.

Happy to see your comments on this leadership insight.

Building Trust

  “The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time – Stephen Covey

Building trust is important for personal,professional and business growth.

What is meant by Trust?

 It is others in your relationship,should believe that you are genuine,your product or service is genuine,or you are capable of doing something worthy,your product or service is worthy.

How Trust can be built? 

Trust  can be built based on “Consistent action and delivery” over a period of time. It is not one time effort or performance. Generally, based on our past consistent behavior or actions, others come to form perception, that is trust.

For example, in a professional environment, if you are consistent in keeping up your commitment  every time, others start trusting you as “committed”.Alternatively, if you commit something and everytime you show up with excuse, others form perception that you are "not dependable". This way only, you build the perception   about you to others.

Similarly, in business, your customers build the trust about your product or service based on the consistent performance of your product or quality of service, how your organization responds to customers.

Hence, building trust is not one time effort, it is CONSISTENT EFFORT and if you would like to preserve the relationship with team, customers, family members or advance your professional growth, do any good thing consistently over a period of time and build trust as this helps your growth !!!

Managing Expectation -Part 9

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others, both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions, approach to manage the expectation as it is difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving  communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving 
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequences

Having discussed first two solutions approach, we discuss the third solutions approach

Deciding the choice and accepting the consequences:

It is very difficult to fulfill all the expectation of others, even though others are related to us in one way or another. To some extent, we can take effort to improve our competency, communication, and interpersonal capabilities to manage the expectation. Most importantly, we can decide the priority in life or decide which relationship we would like to preserve most. Based on the choice or decision, we manage the expectation. However, we need to accept the consequence once the choice or decision taken.

For example, you come across better career advancement opportunity, but you are rejecting the opportunities to fulfill the expectation of your family members. That is your choice and it may be good for you. Once you decide the choice, accept any consequence of career growth. The problem arises only when you are not accepting the consequence and internally feeling guilty about your choice. 

Ultimately, you need to decide which is important to you, which relationship you want to preserve most, take a decision, and accept the consequence happily. This mindset is required for balanced growth and happy life.

Managing Expectation part 7

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others  both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions approach to manage the expectation as it is  difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving the communication and feedback
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequence

Taking responsibility to  improve  the  competency:

       One of the reasons we struggle to fulfill the expectation of others in professional life  is the lack of required competency which organization or others  expect  from us. The one of the ways to cope up with the expectation is  to continuously  upgrade the competency. Competency is the combination of knowledge, skill and attitude towards the task. 

       Depending upon your profession, there is a need to continually update the core knowledge or technical skill. Apart from core skill development, other  management skills like able to prioritize the activities, able to extract the essence of the  information, able to get things down from others,  leveraging technology and others for personal productivity  and so on  needs to be developed.

       As per recent research by World economic forum, Problem solving skill is being top skill expected in the organization. Most of the misunderstandings between peers, boss and subordinate  arises due to lack of  understanding the big picture, detailing to data, analyzing the data, connecting the dots, interpreting the information, articulating the pro’s and con’s of actions  and ability to communicate the solutions approach etc .

      Development and mastering  above competency  is  a life long experience. As said earlier, managing the expectation is also a life long experience!.Hence invest yourself in improving your competency.