Handling Negative People.

When people spend most of the day in close proximity, you are bound to be affected by the positive and negative moods of your co-workers. Will you let a negative colleague affect you professionally or personally?

Do you remember the last time you had a bad day because of a negative colleague? Or the time when you adjusted to the sarcastic remarks by a co-worker. While these workplace blues are unconstrained you can try and bring a change in how you deal with Mr./Ms. Miserable. 

We can avoid pessimist trap by following simple measures:

1. Don’t get into a debate: arguments lead to conflicts. It is human to react and argue to protest and point. However in this situation we need to control our behaviour and responses. Don’t let the snide remarks bother you. Deal with the matter firmly but nicely. 
2. Avoid going public: Such miserable people are insecure about their conduct. They say or do things to get attention of your and others too. By confronting them in public you are actually falling into their trap. Once you make the situation public, it will destroy all future possibilities of fixing it. 
3. Lend a helping hand: complaining starts shouting in the morning, “I handle everything. I have no life after office. I don’t have any friends.” Now, although it is difficult, try to get to the root cause of this outburst. The outburst suggests the person needs help in his work or someone with whom he can talk to.
4. Limit yourself: By now, you must have tried everything- a combination of politeness and a good dose of firmness and positivity. If nothing works, it is time to deal with the situation by staying aloof. Neither is supportive nor critical. Such people eat you energy and in turn your productivity. Reduce contact with them as much as possible. 

Traits of a Good Leader!

Generating trust amongst employees is one of the most important qualities that a leader must possess. Trust forms the foundation of effective communication, employee relation/ retention, and employee motivation. When trust exists in an organization or in a relationship, almost everything else is easier and more comfortable to achieve. So can you build trust when it doesn't exist?

Traits of good leader:

1. Talk Straight- Be clear and concise in your communication. There should be transparency and clarity in what you speak. Be honest and demonstrate integrity. 
2. Demonstrate Respect- Genuinely care and respect everyone and make sure you express it correctly. Be nice to employees who don’t belong to your team as well. Be kind and empathetic towards your employees issues and grievances. 
3. Create Transparency- Be open and authentic. Don’t hide information or have hidden agendas from employees. After all , everyone in your team is working towards a common goal. Always operate on the premise of “what you see what you get”
4. Right Wrongs- If there has been an error from your end, apologies quickly. Make sure you always do the right things and not what is convenient.
5. Show Loyalty- Most often ignored, but must always give credit to hard working employees. You must also be there voice of those who cannot speak for themselves. Avoid speaking negatively about your employees behind the backs.
6. Deliver Result- Make sure you have a track record of results. Accomplish the task you are hired for. Never over promised and under deliver. Avoid making excuses of not delivering.
7. Get Better- Always make an effort to learn and improve.
8. Confront Reality- Do not have unrealistic goal and expectation. Always meet issues as they are. Address tough situation directly. Always acknowledge what is the unsaid and lead conversation courageously. 
9. Clarify Expectation- Be clear while disclosing and revealing expectation from employees. Make sure you discuss and validate your expectation from them. If there is a difference of thinking, renegotiate with them. Always make sure expectation are clear.
10. Practice Accountability- Always hold yourself and others accountable and responsible for their respective tasks. Take responsibility of result, be it good or bad communicate with your employees about how they play in their tasks.
11. Listen First- Don’t make any assumptions. Listen to your employee before speaking. Don’t just listen with ears but also keep your eyes open. Understand the employees’ situation, and then diagnose a solution.
12. Keep Commitments- Make sure you commit carefully.  Always state your intent while committing. Make keeping your commitments the symbol of your honour. Don’t break employee’s confidence in you.
13. Extend Trust- The last and most important point extend trust abundantly to those who have made an effort to earn your trust. Always extend trust conditionally to those who are in the process of earning your trust. Don’t withhold the trust in employees even if it involves risk.

Managing "Bad Apple"!

The principle of fact, as we know, is that one bad apple can spoil the entire bunch. This fact is true on project team in many organizations. A “bad apple” team member may not always be obvious. But, they will usually show up somewhere during the life of the project. As a manager project manager, the “bad apple” has to be dealt with properly promptly and swiftly.

John Maxwell in his work, Seventeen Laws of Teamwork, suggests that a leader, before dealing with a person with a bad attitude, should do some self-reflection and check their own attitude. The person that is leading needs to make sure they are not the problem.

A few simple steps in dealing with the “bad apple” are as follows:

1. First document the problem or symptoms are they begin themselves.
2. The next step is to meet one-to-one with the “bad apple” to provide counselling and advise on how to improve the problem that has been encountered.
3. As a project manager, you must try to get the root of the problem and find out what can done to correct the situation.
4. Once you are assured of the problem, a correction plan or course of action to solve the problem should be initiated. As a manager, you should document the course of action discussed and you and the team member should sign-off on this plan.

Finally, after these steps are completed, the team member will need some time to make the necessary agreed-upon changes to correct the problem. Visible result should be seen, documented and praised. However if no change is observed and the behaviour continues, the manager must start the process of removing the team member. It is obvious to everyone on the team that bad attitude can and has affected the project. The team members are waiting for the manager to take the lead and make corrective action.

Team Building-Upgradation of Team Members

To start with, you can help your subordinates to learn more from their experience by:

Giving time for them to review their actions and work out what was effective, what wasn’t and why, rather than indulging in constant ‘fire-fighting’ (it might prevent a few fires) – Every person it having his/her own grasping power. A team leader should give enough time to his/her team-mates to review their actions in respective the assign goal/tasks. It leads to learning from their own assignments rather a push from outside and it gives positive energy to respective team-mates to accomplish future assignment.

Giving feedback on how they perform; on the results and the way they achieved them- A team lead should share regular feedback with his/her team-mates on their performance on given task, and guide/coach them if required to improve productivity.

Encouraging them to question their assumptions and ready-made conclusions about what experiences mean – A team lead should allow a healthy environment in team, which allow team-mates to approach team lead in the case of any query on assignment. Even after a effective communication on task requirement, some of team-mates might required some clarification on his/her assignments.

Letting them try new ways of doing things to create fresh experiences, rather than rigidly following previous patterns or adapting other peoples’ solution as short-cuts- If the assigned task is not crucial and need not require to follow rigid path, a team lead can allow his/her team mates to try new ways of accomplishing the given tasks. It leads creativity in team and might result more effective ways of doing a task.

Hard Working vs Smart Working

Hard work, no doubt, will pay you. But, hard work in the absence of smartness will not yield the desired results.

It is the smartness in execution of work that distinguishes a successful manager from others.

If a manager drowns himself in hectic activity, finds no time to have his cup of coffee in a hurry, it all indicates that he is not working smartly.

A manager who is not smart enough will only generate lots of work-oriented work oriented work instead of result-oriented work. In his organization, there will be hectic activity and everybody will be very busy, but there will be hectic activity and everybody will be very busy, but there will be very little action and the result will be disastrous. 

I believe it is. Of course, you have to be ‘smart’ about working hard, but hard work always pays. Just being smart or working smart is only half of the real story.

The fact remains that hard work and smart work must go hand in hand for you to be successful. Smart work is about making the right strategy, about following a disciplined work culture. Hard works translates your vision and ideas into results.

Working hard and working smart are not exclusive of each other. Smart work teaches you to be more productive with your time. If you are happy with your current level of success, then smart work will surely allow you the luxury of not having to work as hard as you otherwise would. But if you want to reach the pinnacle of success in your chosen field, than smart work alone won’t really help.

Many people think that hard work goes largely unnoticed. They believe that unless you are ‘smart’ about letting others know that you are working hard, you remain a drudge. They call hard work a kind of drudgery. They are more interested in letting the ‘boss’ know that they are working hard. Their focus is in the wrong direction.

I believe that hard work always gets noticed - perhaps not in the short run, but eventually people can’t help but notice hard work. And the rewards follow without you having to push for them.

You need to stop worrying about doing ‘hard work’ or ‘smart work’; you should just concentrate on doing your best every day. Thinking about rewards and results saps your energy, creating a ‘neediness’ in you.

Rewards come to you when you are not looking for them continuously. When you step out to work with a passion to do your best, you will bring out the best in others as well! That itself is a great reward.

MIS Reporting!

Gather only such vital data/information that is crucial and relevant for your plan of action. Calling for all and sundry data will land you in an information jungle from where you cannot come out, leave alone leading your organization to success.

The MIS reports should not contain unwanted, irrelevant insignificant data. Ask only for such data/information that you really need and that you can make use of.

It should contain maximum information and minimum data.

It needs not supply the managers with the routine details of an organization’s daily activities. Instead, they should provide the manager with the new insights about the business and thus lead the manager to action.

Designing of MIS reports is a job that needs special attention of the manager. There should be proper interaction between managers at different levels in the hierarchy and the floor level personnel before designing the formats. Any amount of time in designing of proper MIS is worth spending.

Calling for too many reports, apart from spoiling accuracy, often tends to give inconsistent result since different reports emerge from different departments.

Let not your MIS be designed in such a way that information gets lost in the jungle of data.

You Can't Please Everybody

It is highly impossible to please everybody; every individual is a different person with different aspirations.

At times managers may have to take hard decisions which are unavoidable. Such decisions may prove to be good for some of the employees and may not be to the linking of others.

An ideal manager will not hesitate to take the right, timely decisions even if they happen to be hard decisions. However, he will obtain honest views of as many people as possible and go ahead with taking such hard decision, after he is fully convinced.

While a particular action will benefit the organization and many people in the organization, a few others in the organization may at the same time not like it. This is because the personalities of individuals differ and there can be no way to keep each one satisfied.

Read a really god story on this:

The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey

A Man and his son were once going with their Donkey to market. As they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them and said: "You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?"

So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and they went on their way.  But soon they passed a group of  men, one of whom said: "See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."

So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."

Well, the Man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey.  By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them.  The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.  The men said: "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey with you and your hulking son?"

 The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do.  They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders.  They went along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole.  In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together he was drowned.

  "That will teach you," said an old man who had followed them: “Please all, and you will please none."