Career Bloom

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Over last 25 years, I have experienced multiple R&D roles in small startups and large multinationals, across multiple geographies (China, US, India) and domains (payments, e-learning, edtech). I consider myself a mix of leader & strategist, entrepreneur & org builder, product creator & problem solver, and now, researcher & systems thinker.

  • Organization Politics – Tactics and other takeaways

    This is the final post in the series about Organization Politics. In the first post Organization Politics – Truth or Myth, we presented some examples of situations which might be termed ‘political’ and proceeded to analyze these situations in more detail in the next post Organization Politics – Anatomy of Office Politics. In the last post Organization Politics – Dealing with Politics, we presented some strategies of dealing with politics at workplace and reasons why it is a good idea to deal with them rather than walk away from it. In this post, we will wrap this up with a discussion on what you need to do in various roles you play in a decision-making situation.

    As we talked in the previous post, it is important to engage with political situation, it helps the organization as well as your career. We also presented a high level framework for dealing with such situations. In this post, let me get into the details of tactics you can use to handle politics by applying the framework.

    Whenever you engage with a decision-making situation, you are in one of these 3 different roles:

    • Observer/Recipient – You are not part of decision-making team and you have to live with the decision. Usually this happens when some high-level organization-wide decisions are being taken, like reorganization, new goals for the organization, etc. This also happens when you choose not to be a participant.
    • Participant – Your input is solicited but you are not the decision-maker for the decision. This is the most common scenario when you either choose to walk away or engage fully.
    • Decision-maker – You are primary (or one of) decision-makers for the decision. This is the case when you are a leader or manager.

    For each of these roles, there are actions that need to be taken in 3 phases: before decision-making happens, during decision-making, and after decision has been made.

    Let’s see how each of these roles should be handled.

    Observer/Recipient

    When you are an observer, your goal should be to understand the decision (and its implication) as early as you can, as well as learn from the experience of others. It is important to understand the decision and its implication to your work, otherwise you will not be able to adapt to it in time, and sometimes it can cause significant issues. For example, if a reorganization within your business unit merges 2 groups into one, it is important to know the new leaders/influencers who are close to decision-makers and understand their priorities, otherwise you may be spending late nights on some project that is not considered important by them and which is likely to be cut.

    Before decision-making
    • Understand the context and the problem to be solved
    • Identify decision-makers and influencers
    • Try and stay close to one of the decision-makers or influencers
    • Create your own hypothesis of what the final outcome should be
    During decision-making
    • Get to know the discussions as they unfold
    • Make attempts to influence the outcome
    After decision-making
    • Read up on all written material available about the decision
    • Talk to as many participants as you can
    • Compare final outcome with your hypothesis to explain the difference if any

    Participant

    When you are a participant, your primary goal should be to be in the best position to influence the decision and then proceed to do so in an ethical manner. You should also be in a position to justify your actions after the decision has been taken, so it is important to stay consistent and transparent, as much as possible.

    Before decision-making
    • Understand the context around the problem
    • Talk to other decision-makers and influencers to understand their positions
    • Identify potential allies
    • Prepare to present and defend your proposal
    During decision-making
    • Understand others’ points of view and self-interests
    • Create coalition with like-minded decision-makers/influencers
    • Present inclusive solutions and use your influencing techniques
    After decision-making
    • Clearly articulate your position during decision-making discussions to those who want to know.
    • Discuss with observers/recipients to understand their reaction and understanding
    • Compare final outcome with your proposal and study the differences

    Decision-maker

    When you are a decision-maker, your primary goal is to convey the sense that the decision will be taken by involving right stakeholders, using a well-known decision-making process, and will be in the best interests of the organization, and then adhere to it.

    Before decision-making
    • Identify right stakeholders to be included in the decision-making process
    • Clarify how the final decision will be made (consensus, majority, etc.)
    • Create your own viewpoint about the decision but stay open for feedback
    During decision-making
    • Understand others’ points of view and self-interests
    • Make the process inclusive by making sure everyone participates actively
    • Use your listening techniques to gather the most out of discussions.
    • Make final decision using the process identified before
    After decision-making
    • Clearly articulate decision made and rationale behind it
    • Encourage participants and observers to learn more about the decision
    • Compare final outcome with your initial point of view and study the differences

    When you are seen as ‘playing politics’

    In spite of your best intentions and efforts, if you are a participant or decision-maker in a decision-making process, you may be labeled as ‘political’. This can undermine your personal brand and damage your credibility. Best thing to do in these circumstances is to over-communicate. Two things need to be communicated, using multiple channels ((emails, blog, videos, podcast, meetings, etc.) and multiple times:

    • Decision-making Process: Make sure people understand how the participants were selected, how were options generated and brainstormed, how were options compared and final option selected, etc. Understanding of the process helps give a sense of comfort and fairness.
    • Rationale for the decision – Communicate why this is the most optimal decision made under the circumstances. Everyone has their own version of ‘best’ decision, and it is important to share all the inputs that went into making decisions so that people can make a more informed assessment of ‘best’.

    Key Takeaways

    Frequently, you will participate in (or observe) a situation where you think you are being exposed to ‘politics’. It is tempting to say ‘this is politics’ and bail out of the situation, rather than take it on and learn to handle them. If nothing else, these are worth engaging because of the wealth of learning to be gained:

    • Discovering self-interests that drive stakeholders in a situation
    • Create inclusive solutions by focusing on AND of multiple viewpoints rather than get into debates about best viewpoint
    • Deal with difficult people and tough conversations
    • Make complex decisions with incomplete information and multiple right answers
    • Critical communication and listening skills

    An organization is a complex system. It achieves optimal results when multiple perspectives (and interests) intersect and a collective, and best-for-the-organization decision is made. If people walk away from these conflicting situations citing politics as a reason (rightly or wrongly), organization suffers and gets destroyed in the long run.

    It is best for the individual (great learning) and organization (best decisions) when individuals engage with complex situations (termed ‘political’ many times) and give their best.

    Don’t get me wrong: Workplace politics is a real thing. When senior leaders have only self-interest in mind (and no thought about organizational goals), situations can turn messy and unmanageable. This is the office politics that you should be wary of, especially if you are not the political kind. However, situation is not always so bleak. What I am pushing back on is really the pseudo-politics that we think we are victims of – I want us to buckle up and handle it successfully.

    Comments and suggestions on this series are most welcome and much appreciated.

    Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  • Organization Politics – Dealing with Politics

    This is a post in the series about Organization Politics. In the first post Organization Politics – Truth or Myth, we presented some examples of situations which might be termed ‘political’ and proceeded to analyze these situations in more detail in the next post Organization Politics – Anatomy of Office Politics. In this post, we will discuss why we need to deal with ‘politics’ as we see around us at workplace and learn a way to do so.

    Let me reiterate a point I made in the last post: Every political situation is a decision-making situation.

    So why should you even deal with politics? Why not just walk away and look for situations where politics doesn’t exist?

    Deal with Politics – Why

    There are a few reasons why walking away is not the best strategy all the time:

    • Every political situation is a great learning opportunity. Walking away means walking away from a lesson life is giving you. It is like bunking classes in the college for the hardest (and usually smartest) prof – you regret it later, and you have to still learn it, and usually in a much harder way.
    • Every workplace decision impacts your career. It is much easier to control your career growth when you can influence the decisions at workplace than when you are just the recipient/observer of the decisions being made by others.
    • Situations that get branded ‘political’ are very common. If you walk away from these common situations, you end up being a novice at workplace, someone who shirks responsibility, and will lose your credibility to lead and manage the organization.

    Last point is worth repeating: in my opinion, many of us use politics is an ‘excuse’ to shy away from tough situations rather than build a career the hard way. This is what distinguishes a great career from a mediocre one. Anyone who wants to grow their career must be willing to engage in situations that others (or you) may brand ‘political’.

    The picture above illustrates the engagement vs. outcome scenarios when you face a political situation. When you have low level of engagement, you just react to the decisions made. When the outcome is favorable, it probably works out fine for you. However, when it is unfavorable, it becomes frustrating and career-limiting, esp. because you didn’t have any say in it. This can give rise to ‘it was politically motivated’ thought. When you have high level of engagement, you feel more in control. Outcome may still be adverse, but still the participation provides better understanding (and it is like any other unsuccessful project you work on) of the decision. When the outcome is favorable, it provides confidence in one’s ability to influence outcomes. Irrespective of outcome, high level of engagement ensures better learning experience and prepares you for successes down the road as you engage more.

    Deal with Politics – How

    3 steps need to be taken to handle political situation (or any other decision-making situation) effectively.

    Increase Awareness

    It is important to understand context, as well as stakeholders, involved in a situation. Understanding an organization’s context means knowing about culture, process, and people related to the situation at hand. For example, in situation #2 presented in first post about quality process, it is very important to know how organization (various divisions which need to collaborate) define and perceive quality, how they feel about process compliance, how have cross-functional teams succeeded (and failed) in the past, etc. Similarly, identifying and knowing stakeholders will mean understanding who all impact and get impacted by the decisions made in the given situation. For the stakeholders involved in decision-making process, it is important to know their goals, values and incentives that they stand for. Such understanding is crucial for the next step of analysis. This is really a data gathering step.

    Analyze Goals, Values and Incentives

    Once you have most of the data, it is time to analyze it to come up with a plan of action. Politics (and most complex organizational decisions) is primarily about stakeholders trying to maximize their personal incentives at the cost of others’ incentives and sometimes at the cost of organizational goals. It is possible (though hard and time-consuming) to come up with decisions which maximizes collective incentives and doesn’t jeopardize organizational goals. To do this, it is important to understand various goals and incentives at play in a given situation, and come up with various possible alternative options. It is also important to understand the values exhibited by the individuals involved in the situation. For example, if CTO is passionate about high quality of software the company must produce consistently, he may be willing to let go of some of his personal incentives, and will be pushing hard on others to do the same, if a decision is going to undermine the quality in some way. There may be similarly powerful personal values that need to be factored into possible alternative options.

    Influence and Persuade

    Once you decide to be part of the solution in the given situation, you need to display strong influencing and persuasion skills. A lot has been written on this topic – see Five Steps to Increase your Influence and the book Art of Woo. Once you have some plan of action (and multiple options for the decision), you need to be able to influence the stakeholders and persuade them to accept one of the proposals. While doing that (maybe using some of the skills and styles mentioned in the references above, or your personal style), it is important to keep the relative authority/power wielded by the stakeholders. Sometimes, knowing who to influence (or persuade) is more important than knowing how to. For example, if you can get the CTO who is passionate about quality to become the sponsor and champion for your quality process initiative, you will avoid many influencing sessions – the CTO will do that for you. Similarly, if you have CFO batting against your proposal, it is critical to persuade him first, even if it means modifying your proposal a little bit to get him to your side. Such trade-offs are good for the organization too, since a proposal vetted by a senior leader is much easier to execute (and hence the organization gets the return on its implementation quickly).

    In the next (and final) post, we will wrap-up by converting above details into a set of tactics that can be employed in various situations. Stay tuned!

  • Organization Politics – Anatomy of Office Politics

    In the previous post Organization Politics – Truth or Myth, I presented a few examples of situations that can be described as ‘political’ in nature. I also talked to a few more managers and individual contributors since then to understand a few more examples of such situations in various types of organizations. In this post, I will discuss characteristics of a situation that might be tagged ‘political’ by some.

    When I recounted my story in the last post, I didn’t include my lesson from it. For me, there were 2 lessons:

    1. A situation demanding complicated decision-making phase is very likely to be seen as political by observers. So it is very important to be transparent and consistent about what I do as a leader in such situations.
    2. Politics lies in the eyes of beholder. One person may claim the situation to be ‘politics’, while another may claim it to be ‘complex decision-making and persuading multiple stakeholders to your point of view’. Since I can’t control perspectives too much, I should learn to deal with such perspectives.

    Anatomy of Organization Politics

    In an organization, politics is almost always used in a derogatory sense, a black mark of sorts on the organization culture. When someone claims “I want to do great things for my company, but the office politics doesn’t let me do it”, he almost always means he is a good guy getting into a situation that makes him do bad things.

    Here are a few more situations which are likely to be tagged ‘political’:

    1. You are impacted by a decision that didn’t go in your favor, and you don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be in your favor.
    2. You see some managers/leaders favoring one person much more than others, even when the person may not be the most capable person around.
    3. You see someone making decisions by getting influenced by ‘friends’, rather than making a ‘rational’ decision.
    4. You see bizarre decisions being taken when multiple divisions/groups of the company are involved.

    All ‘political’ situations are decision-making situations. A decision in an organization needs to maximize the value that organization creates as a result of this decision. Understanding decision-making in an organization is critical to understanding organization politics. Situation and Stakeholder characteristics of a ‘political’ situation are worth reviewing.

    Situation Characteristics

    A decision-making situation which seems political typically consists of these elements:

    • High visibility, high stakes –The situation is under spotlight and decision has a big impact on one or more of stakeholders or their groups..
    • Lack of transparency – There is little clarity about how the decisions will be made (criteria to evaluate options, generating multiple options, validating assumptions, etc.), who will make decisions, how do people contribute to decision-making process, etc. Even after the decision is made, detailed information about the decision rationale and process doesn’t flow readily to the teams who are impacted.
    • Multiple ‘right’ answers – There is no clear right or wrong answer, and there are multiple ‘good’ solutions to the problem being addressed.

    Stakeholder Characteristics

    Stakeholders exhibit one or more of these behaviors:

    • Rigid Viewpoints – Participants are rigid about their viewpoint and unwilling to budge from their position, because they think they have the right answer and others are just wasting time.
    • Strong self-interest – Personal incentives at stake (year-end bonus, public recognition, bigger responsibility, “I-told-you-this-won’t-work” etc.) are very important for stakeholders.
    • Conflicting incentives –Stakeholders have conflicting incentives and self-interests (organizations have conflicting incentives set up by design to ensure debates and optimal decisions)

    Decisions which come out of such situations and stakeholders are very likely to be seen as ‘political’ by many people – participants as well as observers. In the next post, we will look into ways to handle these situations and why we should handle them rather than walking away from them. Stay tuned!

  • Organization Politics – Truth or Myth?

     

    I recently conducted a 2-week course on Being Effective as a New Leader which was offered as part of an initiative from Sunstone Business School. A theme that I heard from many participants was ‘politics is creating too many problems for me’. It was brought up by people with deep experience in leading teams, as well as newbie managers. While I tried to help address their ‘politics’ issues, it was clear that it is a more deep-rooted phenomena than I thought. Based on my discussions with these participants and others I have been talking, it seems that there is too much of office politics going on that impacts people. This post is an attempt to analyze ‘organization politics’ and offer some thoughts on dealing with it.

    Let me start with a personal story: In 2007, I moved to US headquarters of the company I was working with. This was a senior leadership role (and a change from Test to PM discipline for me), reporting to a newly hired (and very seasoned) SVP Engineering. Many of my peers were new in the company too. I was struggling to work well with my new peers and my new manager (while keeping my team insulated from these issues and focused on delivery), and I was doing my best to get agreement amongst them by working individually with them (to understand how I can get them to work with me) and collectively (to make sure decisions are collectively agreed to). While I was describing my daily struggles to my wife, I said: “If someone sees from outside various meetings I do and what I say in those meetings, they will say I am deeply political. I would have said the same if I wouldn’t have been struggling with this right now.”

    Here are a few examples of ‘political’ situations at workplace that I have seen or others have described to me:

    1. You propose a new way of doing things to your manager, he outright rejects it. You try a few times, he keeps rejecting it. You give up “my manager is too political, he doesn’t want me to hog the spotlight when this thing succeeds”.
    2. You are driving a company-wide initiative, with multiple cross-functional teams working together to come up with better quality process, and you don’t get support from engineering team members: they don’t attend your meetings, never respond to emails, rarely pick up their phone. You try to escalate to your boss but he said he can’t do anything; engineering team doesn’t want you to succeed. You give up – “engineering team is playing politics with us, this initiative can’t succeed”.
    3. You are part of a senior leadership team, and have been working for 10 years in the company. You have a new manager and a few new peer. They seem to gang up against you whenever you point out that a new initiative won’t work because it has been tried before in this company. Your manager thinks you are blocking progress, and you think that your manager wants you out of the company to serve his own political needs.

    Have you seen these in your organization? Please share any situation you have faced or observed at your workplace which can be termed ‘political’. This will help me shape my next post as I analyze and offer suggestions.

    Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  • Prepare for performance review 1-1s

    Introduction

    Performance review time is one of the most stressful period in an organization, both for the employees and for their managers. Given the fact that most managers don’t provide performance feedback during the year and wait for the performance review season to do so, it becomes the time for surprises, brickbats, and distress. The crucial 1-1 conversation between employee and their manager becomes the most important conversation of the year which determines many aspects of the career. So it is important for everyone (employee and manager) to be ready.

    Employee Readiness

    A performance review 1-1 is effective for an employee if he achieves following goals:

    • Performance rating aligned with expectation
    • Bonus and Salary raise aligned with performance
    • Specific feedback on areas of improvement

    CareerBloom helps you prepare a good case for your performance that you can write in self-appraisal as well as use in your 1-1. We can also prepare you to ask right questions to gather right amount of details from your manager about areas of improvement so that you can achieve your career goals next performance review cycle.

    Manager Readiness

    A performance review 1-1 is effective for a manager if he achieves following goals:

    • Address employee’s needs and expectation from performance review
    • Clearly communicate the rationale behind the performance rating
    • Provide specific feedback on areas of improvement

    CareerBloom helps you get ready for typical questions from an employee by offering coaching on how best to handle it, given your organizational context. We also help you craft your communication plan around the performance rating and performance improvement areas.

  • My Independence: Roadblocks and Lessons

    In my last post How I earned my Independence, I talked enthusiastically about my newly found freedom to finally pursue what I wanted to do and expressed immense optimism about the future that beckoned me as I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey. Some of the feedback I got from the readers were on the lines of ‘wow, it seems you have it all figured out, cool!’. And I agreed with them, I had it all figured out – I had a start, some initial traction, plenty of goals to be accomplished, and lots of directions I could pursue!

    If only life could be so simple and planned! J

    This is not a hope and happily-ever-after story, I don’t think any entrepreneurial journey ever is. This is a dose of realism, somewhat disappointing to a few, definitely cathartic for me, and hopefully useful for a few people out there who believe in their dream and have to slog for it. (more…)

  • Receiving Feedback Effectively

    As I talked about in Giving Feedback Effectively, feedback giving requires skill and practice, and it is worth the effort. Ability to receive feedback well (and then act on it appropriately) is also a key skill to learn. Lots have been written about giving feedback, less on receiving. You want to be good at receiving feedback because they provide tremendous learning opportunities. Being good at receiving them also encourages feedback givers and you get more feedback from them and others.

    There are 3 steps to be followed whenever you have an opportunity to receive feedback.

    Make the feedback giver comfortable

    You need to demonstrate behavior that makes the person comfortable. A feedback giver is doing a favor to you and you should show your appreciation. Good behavior also makes the information more forthcoming and you are likely to receive feedback again. Behaviors to be demonstrated when receiving feedback:

    1. Listen well – You should be totally focused on the feedback, and your body language should show it (it will if you are honestly focused on the feedback).
    2. Demonstrate your understanding – Paraphrase and say again, ask clarifying questions, etc.
    3. Don’t defend – Not jumping to defend your actions is probably the hardest thing to do, but must be done if you want the feedback session to go well. Feedback giver gives feedback because they want to see you get better, not to be proven wrong. If you think the feedback is unacceptable, unfair, or wrong, feel free to ignore it when it is time to analyze and follow-up.
    4. Stay calm – This is hard if the feedback is critical, but it is important to stay calm throughout. Remember, the feedback is rarely about who you are, it is almost always about what you did. Also, most feedback givers will withdraw immediately if they see you are getting too uncomfortable.

    Collect as much data as possible

    When receiving feedback, make sure you get 4 things right:

    1. Context – Which meeting, event, instance is being talked about? What really happened? Who is the affected party?
    2. Action – What did you do?
    3. Expectation – What were you expected to do?
    4. Impact – What was the impact on the affected party?

    Analyze feedback and follow-up

    Follow this 3-step process when you analyze the feedback:

    1. Analyze all the data from the feedback session and form hypotheses
      1. Do you agree with the feedback? If not, why do you think the feedback giver felt this way? This usually generates more data (by looking at an event from outsider’s perspective) or triggers the need for more data
      2. Do you need more information? Maybe talk to others who saw you in that context? If so, talk to them and ask them open-ended question (make sure you don’t bias them)
      3. Why did you behave the way you did? Was there a different way to behave? Was it better?
    2. Decide whether to accept it or not
      1. Accept for improvement – You may agree with the feedback and work on creating an improvement plan for yourself.
      2. Accept for monitoring – Many behavioral traits are hard to put your finger on, and watching for them usually reveals more data. Feedbacks can serve as good trigger to observe yourself for some such traits.
      3. Reject – There are many reasons you might want to reject the feedback. It could be a one-off behavior, or a behavioral trait that you believe defines you, or it isn’t really sometime you need to fix, etc. Be clear why you are rejecting, otherwise you might be ignoring some serious problem.
    3. Follow-up – Make sure you communicate the decision you made about this feedback, to the person who gave the feedback. Also, make sure you thank them again.

    Giving and Receiving feedback are 2 of the most important tools to have in your armory if you want to be an effective professional. Being good at these is important for your career growth and relationship-building.

    Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  • Giving Feedback Effectively

    Giving feedback is one of the most important tools for career growth. It may be easy to do, but hard to do well. Here we are talking about feedback that is delivered face to face.

    A feedback can be of two types:

    1. Solicited – You are asked by the receiver to give them feedback.
    2. Unsolicited – You want to give feedback though the intended recipient hasn’t asked for it

    While #1 is easier to handle than #2, unless the recipient is expert at receiving feedback, both require care when delivering the feedback. A feedback is really well-structured communication, and all communications build relationship. When you learn to give feedback well, you become good at building and maintaining good relationships, which goes a long way in enhancing your career growth in unforeseen ways.

    A feedback can be positive too, and it is equally important to deliver a positive feedback as it is to do the critical one. However, given that this is positive, the downside of getting it wrong is really low (worst case, it sounds like a hollow praise, which is not too bad!). Feedback has come to mean critical feedback and that is how I am using the word in rest of this post.

    Why Give Feedback

    There are many reasons why you give feedback:

    1. Requirement of Role – If you are a manager, you are expected to give feedback to your reports. Depending on organizations, there are other roles which are expected to give feedback – mentor-mentee, employee-intern, manager-HR, project manager-team member, etc.
    2. Building Relationship – Relationships break when you don’t like a behavior but you don’t talk to the person to understand what went wrong. Giving feedback about what you felt and what should be done next is a great way of going forward and slowly build a trust relationship.
    3. Solicited – Sometimes, you are asked by someone to give feedback. It may be your manager soliciting feedback from his reports, or a peer or another team member genuinely interested in their development and seeking input.

    How to Give Feedback

    A good feedback is:

    1. Immediate: a good feedback is delivered as close to the actual event as possible. Otherwise, both you and the recipient forget details and the feedback may not remain effective.
    2. Personal: a good feedback talks about how it impacted you as a person, instead of talking in general terms. For example, ‘your words were very blunt’ is not personal, ‘your words hurt my feeling and made me feel small’ is. These are better because they can’t be challenged by the recipient as an arguable opinion, and hence focus stays on what to do about it.
    3. Non-judgmental – a good feedback is factual and avoids any judgmental statement. The goal is to focus on what can be done about it, rather than debating its merits. For example, ‘you were dismissive of any suggestions being given in the meeting’ is judgmental, while ‘when I offered a suggestion to the problem we were discussing, you dismissed it without spending any time on it’ is factual.
    4. With examples – A good feedback provides very specific examples so that the recipient can evaluate the feedback and act on it. For example, ‘you are not detail-oriented’ is not very helpful (though managers love to give such feedback! J), ‘Your last 3 spec documents had basic grammatical mistakes, the excel sheet you produced for our customer projection had some wrong formulas, and when I asked you to plan the team offsite, you didn’t take care of many logistics details; it seems that you lack attention to detail.” Is much more helpful for the recipient.
    5. Kind – A Good feedback is delivered with good intentions and with a goal to help the other person improve. So its choice of words are appropriately kind and empathetic, but without losing the specificity of the feedback. It is very important to keep the core feedback clear and precise, and not interpret kindness to mean sugarcoating and diluting the message.

    Also, take permission before starting, keep reading the recipient’s words and body language, and be ready to modify/terminate your feedback mid-way. When you are done giving the feedback, you may be asked follow-up questions for clarification or help, so be ready for it. A typical follow-up will be ‘From your perspective, what would have been the ideal response from me?’

    Handling Feedback Response

    One of the hardest parts of the feedback is to deal with the response you might get from the recipient. These could be of all kinds, here are a few categories:

    1. Silent – The person is usually too shocked or hurt to respond. This silence can be very awkward. Usually, this can be handled by asking permission to terminate the session and leave the recipient alone.
    2. Defensive/Aggressive – The person starts explaining his actions and proves why their action was right under the circumstances. If this happens, treat this in a similar way you would treat an unsolicited feedback (listen, thank, and walk away). You may later choose to give feedback about the defensiveness shown by the person but it can be a slippery slope (if you tell someone they get defensive when receiving feedback, they can’t argue back because it will prove the point you just made, so they have no way of showing they disagree!).
    3. Receptive – The person thanks you for the feedback and wishes to terminate the session to go back and think about it. This is the best case scenario, and the right behavior you should expect. The person may do nothing about the feedback, and as a feedback giver, you don’t control it and shouldn’t feel bad about it. They may come back later to ask for more details or your suggestions to solve the issue you saw.

    Best way to be good at giving feedback is to keep giving feedback to people and handle the consequences of some badly delivered (or received) ones! These experiences are your best teachers.

    In our next post, we will focus on ‘how to receive feedback‘. Stay tuned!

    Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  • Book Recommendation: First, Break all the rules

    First, break all the rules, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman is a remarkable management book which attempts to prove that standard management practices don’t work, and instead offers new set of rules. This book is a proponent of strengths-based management principle that believes that it is better to focus on strengths of your employees and make them better, instead of focusing on their weaknesses and attempt to ‘fix’ them. For me, when I first read this book, it was an ‘aha!’ moment; and I have been a fan of the book (and the whole strengths-based philosophy). Something that I always believed in, I now had words and frameworks to understand and explain.

    The book has been based on survey data from Gallup from thousands of managers. Their analysis brought them to this insight: 

    People don't change that much.
    Don't spend time trying to put in what was left out. 

    Try to draw out what was left in.
    That is hard enough.

     

    Some of the not-so-common insights from the book that I found insightful are as follows:

    1. Don’t spend time trying to improve a deficiency, spend that time instead in improving their strengths
    2. When you find someone deficient in a critical skill, try to pair them up with someone who possesses the skill, and use this team (instead of individuals)
    3. Everyone has the talent to be exceptional at something. The trick is to find that ‘something’, what Marcus calls casting (drawing from actor selection for movies).

    A must read for anyone who things they are a good manager. For balance, make sure you also read about criticisms leveled against strengths based leadership (one of them here).

  • 3 bad reasons to change job

    Most of us are guilty of leaving a job when it wasn’t needed, as well as not leaving a job when it was needed. This hurts our career prospects significantly. Here are 3 bad reasons for changing job, and how to avoid them.

    ‘I can’t get along with my boss’

    This is probably the most common reason to change the job. There are very few good bosses around, so there is indeed a good chance you will find a bad boss and may want to leave. However, for this very reason, you are equally likely to walk into another such boss again in your career. Whenever you encounter a boss you can’t work with, take the opportunity to learn how to work with him rather than running away from the problem by leaving the job. This usually requires understanding your own style of working, your boss’s style, and how to change yourself (or your boss) to adapt. This experience could be frustrating or painful but the reward is not only a workable (and sometimes good, in my experience) relationship with your boss, but also a joy in knowing you now have an important skill in your career arsenal. While you may eventually leave when pain outweighs learning, the reason for change should always be something other than leaving your boss if you care about your career.

    ‘It is hard getting anything done here’

    This is usually the case when organizations are/become ineffective, inefficient, or both. You get frustrated by the lack of progress and would like to move on. However, in my experience, best career experiences happen when you are willing to stay engaged as the organization tries to fix its issues, and keenly observe and learn from what is happening around you. It comes with pain and hardship because you are getting frustrated at the lack of progress. However, you learn valuable lessons about organization, management, inter-personal relationships, and change management, and any prospective company will value them a lot. You can’t get such experiential lessons by reading a book, talking to others or taking a course. It is important to be selective in such a learning, pick people/situations that offer learning most aligned to your career milestones. Of course, there will be a time when situation hasn’t improved, you think you have learned enough, and it is time for you to move, then you should find a good reason to move.

    ‘I am being offered a higher salary’

    When salary is the primary reason for change, it is a bad reason and you should be careful, it usually hides some valuable information. A company will always look for the return on investment on your salary, and so a higher salary should mean one of the two things: the new company thinks you are being undervalued currently, or it is paying for your potential. If it is the former, you should be investigating how you reached this stage of being undervalued (assuming it is a right assessment), and if it is the latter, you should be very careful in clarifying the expectation this company has from you, otherwise this may set you up for career failure. However, most common reason for being offered a higher salary is to entice you to move. Such changes are dangerous for the career, because you will reach a position where you don’t offer enough to the organization to justify the price tag and your performance evaluation will suffer.

     

    Change is very hard. Moving to a new company requires you to spend time re-establishing your credibility, and learn about it enough to be productive at a level higher than in previous company. Such changes may risks to your career. Reasons for changes should be evaluated carefully, and above reasons should be avoided. In our next post, we will talk about some good reasons to change job.

    What is your favorite ‘bad reason’ to change job?