Author: Sree

Dog’s Can Teach You 5 Important Lessons In Leadership?

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Those who had Dogs as a pet at home would vouch for some of the important leadership lessons they can offer. While you reflect on the points I present below, its important to understand that when you get a Dog into your family it starts to consider you as part of the pack. While it starts its association as a member of the pack, it strives hard to take the position of the leader of its pack. It does so diligently and persistently with several actions which start to endear itself to the pack members and slowly accede space to gain the commitment and trust of the pack. The same applies to you when you join an organizational team. You are part of a pack and strive hard to rise up in the organizational hierarchy. So what lessons can you learn from Dogs which will help you achieve success with your team / pack? Here are a few to ponder…Dog leadership

Unconditional love – The dog never makes its love conditional on its pack members. It shows the same level of love and affection day in and day out, whether you have fed it or not; given treats or not. It receives you everyday morning cheerfully and does not carry the baggage from the past in its interactions with you. Can we do that with our organizational teams? Most of us are caught up in knowing the benefits of being nice to others. We are always looking to base our interactions with others on the returns such relations can provide us. This when displayed by all pack members leads to political behavior and a toxic environment. When people experience conditional support from you, they try to avoid your company and disengage. If you can provide fellow team members with your unconditional support and affection they will reciprocate the same. This is such an important aspect of leadership as well.

Protection – Dogs are fiercely protective of their pack and can take on any danger without fear. They steadfastly protect their territory and are always paying attention to the impending dangers to their pack members. They are willing to put up a fight no matter the size of the intruders. When you find that your Dog is putting up a fight for you, it fills you with pride and immense joy. As leaders we need to provide similar protection to our team members. They must feel secure when you are around and not be threatened in your company. That’s what the pack leader or the alpha dog offers in return for the loyalty and commitment of its members.

High engagement – You will not find your Dog sit around the couch and do nothing for long hours. It will after brief intervals nudge you to come play and be part of some action. Those who have had dogs at home will find that they never allow you to laze around and are always pushing you to move and keep your engaged at all times. They draw their energy from group activities and the same is what you can offer to your teams as leaders. You must continuously keep your pack enthused by nudging them for action. You must get involved in group activities and keep your pack battle ready all the time.

Cheerful disposition – When you look at your Dog, it immediately brings a smile on your face. Its joy when it sees you is infectious. When it comes jumping onto you with joy; licking you; kissing you; will make you leave all your belonging on the floor and cuddle up with your bundle of joy. I’m not suggesting that as leaders we need to lick and kiss our team members 😊 but do they feel great joy when they encounter you everyday? Do you smile and greet them and transmit positive energy when you meet them? It can go a long way in creating a happy workplace.

Discipline – Dogs are sticklers to rituals. They have a time for everything and never get bored following the same ritual day in and day out. They also push you everyday to stick to those timelines for eg: like going for a walk everyday, grooming, feeding etc., In their company you will find that you get disciplined as well and your fitness levels also increases. Leaders can follow similar rituals with their team which will keep them fit for the work they do.

These five dimensions of a Dogs behavior is what makes them gradually take the pack leadership space. While you may feel that you own the Dog, you will know that over a period of time they have been controlling every aspect of your life without even you realizing it. You can get the commitment and love of your team if you can be the Alpha Dog of your organizational pack.

Does Your Vision Statement Inspire People? Check it out?

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Most vision statements I have seen posted on the walls of organizations truly are not ‘vision’ statements at all. They suffer from being too generalized, bombastic or complex which hardly exude any confidence in the people who are to work towards them. Worst so that employees are not able to ‘visualize’ how the outcome will look like after reading the vision statement. The very purpose of having a vision statement is to help people clearly see how the fruits of their labor will look like. It has to excite them and make them feel they are already there. It should not be something which makes them feel there current state is a long way away from it.

Vision

Let me explain this with a few examples of ‘BAD’ vision statements which will hardly inspire people or be in their minds while they work. They are hard to remember as well.

“We aim to provide diverse set of scalable and strategic knowledge management tools to serve our customers, improving the possibility of overall satisfaction among our diverse customer profiles”

How vague and complex is this one? It is very difficult for even the intended customers to visualize how the final outcome will look like.

Let’s look at a vision statement which truly is a ‘vision’ and inspirational. This one from Microsoft

“There will be a personal computer on every desk running Microsoft Software”

“Reliance will help you make phone calls to your loved ones cheaper than a postcard”….famously said by the late Shri. Dhirubhai Ambani.

I’m sure you see the difference. Easy to remember, more importantly, easy to ‘Visualize’. You all know the impact these vision statements had.

Does your vision meet the criteria as I stated above? If not are you willing to relook and change it to be more visionary?

5 Secrets Of Motivation – Lessons to Learn From The Armed Forces.

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Keeping a vast and extremely diverse contingent of soldiers highly motivated at all times is a greater challenge than going into battle. How does the Indian Army ensure that their soldiers are always motivated and primed for any eventuality? How do they ensure the motivation doesn’t wane in the face of any hardship? Are there lessons the corporates can learn to get high levels of employee engagement and motivation?

Army motivation

Having been raised in a family of soldiers from the Indian Army I was always intrigued and on reflection found some simple yet powerful ways in which kept the motivation going. I thought of sharing a few…

  1. Safe environment – all the soldiers families are provided with a safe environment where their children and spouses are well provided for. Safe and secure housing, subsidized rations, travel safety for their children to go to school and many more. I think for all of us in the corporate world, many of these and more,, are of concern and at the back of our mind when we go to work. Has my child reached safely to school? When he is back home, is he safe and secure? These and many more major and minor hygiene factors keep us from putting our 100 percent on the job. The soldier needn’t bother about all these. He is assured that his family is well taken care of and safe. This gives him complete peace of mind and he then can focus on his job. I can vouch for this as I grew up with my Dad being away at the front and not with us almost for 10 – 11 months in a year; year-on-year. Myself and my siblings never felt down on motivation because all of us felt very secure in the environment we grew up.
  2. Education – with schools and colleges run by the Army, the soldier never had to bother about his child’s education. That was provided for and the teaching was consistent across the country. When we had to move from one station to another, we never felt out of place as the environment was very similar. If you go to any Army school across the country, you will find the consistency in the environment. A child’s education is always a primary concern for any parent and their well being if taken care of, can be a great motivator at work.
  3. Health and Wellness – The fact that there are Army hospitals and clinics to take care of the health and wellness needs of the entire family is another important factor which contributes to the motivation of a soldier. He needn’t worry as in case of any emergency he knows that some of the best facilities and health care professionals are made available to him – free of cost. What more can he ask for?
  4. Family welfare centers – I thought this one was really a super idea. These welfare centers were places where the family members including spouses and children not just socialize but also learn new vocational skills as well. They were a great place for bonding and went a long way in creating a healthy collaborative environment. It also encouraged us to jointly celebrate festivals and other occasions.
  5. Housekeeping and maintenance – is another area which bothers us when we step out to work. That’s precisely the reason why employees are seeking out residences which provide for all amenities and maintenance as well. People are willing to pay a premium for getting these services. In the Armed forces, these are taken care of and that helps a great deal.

Why not we look at innovative ways of implementing the above in the corporate world? When your employee feels his home is secure, he can be fully committed and focused at work…

You Don’t Fire Your Children? Leadership lessons from parenting

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What do you do when there is a dip in performance of your child at school? How do you respond when you find that your child is not very engaged at home? How do you respond to your children when they fail? How do you respond when your children get caught in sibling rivalry and conflict? What do you do?

Parenting and leadership

You don’t ‘fire’ your children, do you?

There are a lot leaders who can learn from the experience of parenting. Not just what to do but also what not to do. You don’t have to be parent, but just having observed or experienced your parent you get a lot of insights.

Dip in performance – When you find that your child’s performance is dipping and not to the potential or expectations, you do try to understand the challenges the child faces, identify the root causes, and providing coaching and mentoring to develop in the areas you found him to be weak. You are willing to invest in private tuitions, remain patient and provide an environment which will help your child to hone his skills and thrive. We don’t see that often with business leaders today. In the mad rush to meet the numbers and drive results, leaders are not sensitive to the human need of a strong ‘circle of safety’ of their team members.

Lack of engagement – As parents we are willing to invest considerable time and effort just so to ensure that our children feel engaged and sense of belonging to the family. Parents are also able to quickly sense if the child looks distant and disengaged. They don’t allow such lack of engagement to linger for long. You see parents engaging in long conversations, trying to find out what lead to such distance and the activities which interest the child. They try hard to meet those expectations. When parents fail to identify such disengagement or lack of interest in the child, they cause a lot of low grade stress and anxiety. In today’s day and age of long work hours and stressful environment this disengagement is acute and leading to stress affecting children of all age groups. Aggression and suicidal tendencies are commonplace around the world. As leaders are you investing enough time and effort to get your team engaged? Are you leading them towards workplace aggression and suicidal tendencies (in this case, deliberately not contributing enough to their role)? Why not do what you do with your children to your employees too? The large number of employee engagement programs are an indication that we have not being doing enough in the past.

Conflict – When children get into conflict both with their siblings and their friends during play, parents act as excellent facilitators who try and resolve the dispute in an unbiased way. They are willing to sit down with the concerned parties and without taking sides understand both sides of the story and attempt to get a win:win resolution. They are sensitive to the fact that any bias will impact one or the other adversely and aggravate the situation. Parents use excellent ‘negotiating’ skills to maintain family harmony. Leaders can take a leaf from the parental way of dealing with conflicts and learn to deal with workplace conflicts in a more meaningful way. This can greatly contribute to a collaborative workplace which values win:win approach.

Failure – We always heard from parents that ‘failures are stepping stones to success’. Parents are much more kind to our failures and provide all the motivation when they see that we are down and out after committing errors or mistakes. The first example of such motivation is when the child learns to take its first baby step. We fell so many times in our attempt to walk but the parent never is disappointed or disheartened. Rather the parent is delighted that we have atleast made an attempt. You also see that parents call up their friends and relatives to announce that you have made an attempt to walk or speak out your first word. Don’t you think that is what made us who we are today? If they were critical in the first instance or many subsequent attempts, the child in us would have completely withdrawn and we would have been still crawling our way to our office. Do leaders take to failure kindly at workplace? Are they willing to spend time and energy in motivating their employees to rise from the fall and lead them to success? Is there a lesson for you as a leader in this?

What are the other lessons you can think of? Please feel free to add in your comment.

Busting the ‘Work from Home’ Myths

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With an increasingly connected digital world, the demand for ‘work from home’ options are also increasing. The belief that it provides your employees a chance at good ‘work-life’ balance and can improve productivity is sometimes stretched too far. I’ve seen employees literally fighting for such options and also take it as a status symbol if they operate in this fashion. They brag about it not just in office but also to their friends and family. Does it really help?work from home

Here is my take on factors which have a negative influence of a work from home culture. This after working and running a business from home for over 3 decades…

Affects Work-life balance – Actually your work-life balance can get adversely affected if you ‘work from home’ often. Those who have experienced this will find it hard to admit that the ‘myth’ that you will have more time for your family is totally false. In fact when you work from home, what you have done is carried your work home literally. Is that not what you were trying to avoid as it was coming in the way of your work life balance? There is a feeling in organizations that since you have been provided the ‘privilege’ you are always available to connect and discuss business. It ends up more a 24 hr. job with frequent interruptions (mistaken for breaks). It’s not just your employer but your family starts to feel that you are always available to spend time with them and for their needs. You end up getting stretched from both sides.

Affects Trust – While the work from home option demonstrates the organizations trust in the employee it at times becomes counterproductive. Managers start suspecting whether or not the employee is putting in 100% effort at home. There is a thought which lingers in the minds of the people who are at office about the quality of time spent by the homers on work related aspects. Myself and my business partner having over 3 decades of friendship and partnership have at times suspected each other of not spending enough time on business.

Affects Team camaraderie – When you do not meet people regularly and connect with them only via the digital world, the emotional engagement is missed. Conversations become more cryptic and to the point and you are always talking business. We all know that bonding happens in informal settings and non-business discussions amongst people. That’s why you find many organizations going for team outings to enhance employee engagement. While it helps to an extent but being a formally organized event does not have the necessary impact. It also cannot be a once or twice in a year event. Building bonds and relationships does not happen this way, it’s a long process and a continual one at that. And where do you think this is possible? – at workplace ofcourse!

Affects Motivation – It’s not easy to be self-motivated while it is a great thing to talk about. When you get to see is when you feel pumped up. This is the psychology from early childhood. Haven’t you found yourself wanting to get or desire something when you see others having it? When you see people enjoying, talking, being recognized, sharing in person it makes a hell a lot of difference. You feel motivated to be a part of the groups. It’s like the child sitting on the sidelines watching a group of children play and after sometime it is automatic that his motivation to jump into the play increases. No one likes to be on the sideline! Being alone at home can get on to your nerves like solitary confinement.

Affects Home – It’s no one’s fault and it’s not on purpose. Being home leads to feeling obligated to do more household chores because you’re “technically” home (as in, you’re physically in the house).

It starts with little things, like that Plumber who’s supposed to stop by between 1-5PM or the Courier which is to arrive at 11AM. It’s not a huge imposition, you’re already home. So, of course, you’ll be the point person on that task.  Before you realize, you’re the point person for everything – finishing up what’s left of the dishes, being available for package deliveries, and (worst of all) being the babysitter when your child’s school declares a holiday on account of rain. Most of us don’t even realize this lopsided division of labor happening until it’s too late. Being an entrepreneur myself I can vouch for the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult for you to refuse at home. Your attempts at being assertive can be seen as non-cooperative and at times insensitive leading to relationship issues.

Affects Perception – I myself have been a victim of the perception that I am jobless and at home doing nothing. Many are still not able to comprehend that you can earn even working from home. The societal conditioning that you have to go someplace to work and spend may be 10 -12 hrs. really is at the bottom of such perceptions. People tend to take you for granted and load you with chores as they perceive that you don’t have any work and all the time in the world. They start to get on to your nerves after a point.

Interruptions – They are already one of the top reasons effecting time management at work, at home it gets multiplied many times over. Getting by the day without interruptions will be rare. People may unintentionally walk-in while you are on a call or trying to gesticulate while you are on a call effecting your concentration. We know how difficult it is to get back on track after you have derailed at work. Such derailments happen quite frequently at home as people at home are not bound by official rules of engagement. They feel that it is rightful of them to interrupt you at any time. Children may interrupt you at work as they find that you are always available at home. While many choose this option to take care of their children, they end up scolding them for frequently coming in the way of work. You will start to feel that you were better off at work than at home.

Procrastination – Work from home can lead to an increasing challenge of prioritization between the urgent and important. With frequent compromises being made and priorities shifting based on urgency, there may be a tendency to postpone work to the extent that you end up working late hours to make up for lost time.

Complacency – Since no one is observing you, the tendency to become complacent is very high. In the office you cannot laze around for long durations doing nothing, while this is not the case at home. This can negatively impact your productivity. All of us require a little bit of monitoring and control to help us stay on course.

There may be many more, but ‘work from home’ can lead to people violating your boundaries, and assuming that you are a hobbyist. Organizations must seriously consider whether it is really helping them. I’ve seen organizations struggling to revert to old ways of working after they realize that the work from home concept is not paying as much dividends as they expected. They are faced with resistance not just from the people who have already got into the comfort of working from home but also from the people who expect the ‘privilege’ sometime in the future.

Agree?

6 hacks you can learn from ‘Game Designers’ to increase employee engagement

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It’s always fascinated me to see how gamers get hooked to long hours of gameplay without fatigue. I started to look at the characteristics of gaming which get such high level of engagement from the gamers. Are there any lessons organizational leadership can learn? Is there an environment you can provide which makgaming lessons for leadershipes employees feel happy and totally committed to the job? Can you create a workspace where people feel that its closer to their dream job?

If you think that the key elements which contribute to a highly engaged employee is a ‘high paid’ and ‘easy’ job you are mistaken. Our two decades of research into the causes which account for a highly motivated and engaged employee provided evidence on the contrary.

Here are the 6 characteristics which game designers use to build games that suck you in for hours on end.

  1. Compelling story line – With all the popular games you will find a compelling story which stimulates some of the base emotional needs of any individual. Something like the ‘victory of good over bad’, war, mystery, fight, race against time, competition etc. Anything which will provide an adrenaline rush. It also provides visibility of a higher goal which will be achieved by being part of the story. As leaders you must ask – ‘Do I have a compelling story to tell to my people?’; ‘Will it excite them enough to be part of the journey?’ ‘Will the story satisfy all their basic human needs?’
  2. Clearly defined goals – as with any game there is are clear goals to be achieved and they are made visible as part of the initial storyboard. The gamer is not just shown a clear path moving from one level to the other but also provided with a visual of how it looks like at the next level. It also gives them a clear vision of their performance goals and the benefits of achieving them. Mind you, this is not one time – each time the gamer reboots the system, it starts with the screen showing the levels he has already unlocked and the one’s yet to accomplish. This keeps him focused and raring to go. The human mind is designed to unlock the mysteries of life and that is the very emotion it triggers when the gamer finds locked levels in front of him. As he knows what awaits him in the next level, he strives hard to reach there. Similarly, leaders must provide a complete storyboard of the career path for each employee and a visual of what he will accomplish at each level. This story shouldn’t be one time or just during performance reviews; it should be a daily visual. That’s the only way you can keep your employees engaged. Remember, employee engagement is not a fancy which you indulge in from time to time but a sustained effort which will surely pay dividends in the long run.
  3. Training and skilling – every game provides initially a training level of the complete gameplay. The gamer is provided with complete information of the steps and necessary skills to play the game with ease. Simulation is provided where immediate feedback is given and alternative methods shown to achieve game tasks. This ensures that the gamer is comfortable before he takes on a particular level. Training levels greatly improves the confidence of the gamer before jumping into the actual scenario as it is non-threatening and fun. He is allowed to fail as many times as he wants just for him to learn the nuances of the gameplay. As leaders you must look at employee training and upskilling as an essential part of engagement. I find that training always takes a back seat in the face of daily urgencies and also takes the first hit when there are cost cutting measures. This doesn’t really help.
  4. Freedom in how you perform tasks – while most of the gameplay scenarios are pre-defined and the path is set out very clearly for the gamer; the games provide enough flexibility to perform tasks. In games you find that at each level, the gamer is provided with the flexibility to choose his weapon and ammunition of choice, the vehicles, the money he wishes to carry etc. This gives him the feeling of involvement and the power of choice. When the gamer feels that he is making the choices at each level, he feels in control and is totally engaged. As leaders you must see if your work provides your employees the freedom required to do their tasks their way. While guidelines will be there in your company, it should not be perceived as constraining with limited choice. Innovation, initiative and creativity should not be mere lip service.
  5. Feedback to let you know how you are doing? – in all games there is continual feedback on the progress the gamer is making. For example, he is clearly shown when his health is deteriorating and when his health has improved or reached high levels. You must as leaders ensure that the feedback process is not one time or only during performance reviews but continual. It gives your employees complete awareness of the progress they are making on a daily basis. If there is one tool that you can use to manage and develop performance – it is the use of feedback.
  6. Visible rewards and recognition dashboards – leaderboards and rewards are the ways in which games provide the gamer with a sense of accomplishment. It also helps him compare his performance with the rest of the gamers in the world. It keeps him motivated to do better and better every day and turn out with strategies to win. You will see that these leaderboards are visible and constantly available on screen for the gamer to see where he stands in terms of gaming points and rank against the rest. Likewise leadership should not be afraid of publishing leader boards and make it visible at all times for employees to feel competitive at the same time remain motivated towards higher levels of achievement.  Who doesn’t like to be on the podium at least once in their life after all?

Do you have more lessons to share?

5 Hiring Mistakes You Must Avoid!

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5 Hiring Mistakes You Must Avoid!

hiring mistakes

Desperation – I see that most HR folks though talk about careful validation through the entire hiring process however are caught up in meeting the hiring targets. When they push resumes to the line managers, they act more as salesmen for the candidate and seem to provide subtle hints to the manager as to why he/she should be hired. They also end up using assessment tools and other popular methodologies to fool-proof their case. Many I see are just trying to meet their numbers. The problem is while you might be having an immediate vacancy to be filled and the pressure to meet the numbers, you might end up getting loads of profiles on your table just in case something clicks. At times you see managers end up hiring out of sheer fatigue of the whole process and want the whole pain to end. This desperation can get in lot of junk into the system which you will find hard to cope with. You also end up at times ‘justifying’ your hiring decisions even though you know that you have made a mistake. There is a great reluctance to ‘fire’ after a lengthy hiring cycle therefore you end up compromising till it gets to a point where the costs of a wrong hire start hitting you directly. In an organizational context by the time you come to realize this, the damage is done.

Familiarity – While employee referrals are a good way to quickly get people it may not get you a diverse range of people in your team. The problem is accentuated when you incentivize your employees for referral hires. The said employee may create enough background conditions and share information with the referred candidate which may fog the hiring decision. In fact I’ve seen it becomes counter productive at times as at times you end up hiring cause you don’t want to offend your current employee with many rejects of his referrals.

Cultural misfit – In pursuit of meeting business numbers you may end up highly skilled and experienced workers from diverse background who may not necessarily be a culture fit. While it looks all good talking about having a culture and looking for people who fit into it, organizations most often succumb to the pressure of hiring and give the softer aspect of culture a pass. They believe that they can groom the person towards their culture after hiring. Rarely does it succeed. Values are not formed and internalized through a 2 day workshop. It is years of conditioning which you cannot remove soon. When you get cultural misfits you will in the long term face high levels of conflicts and disengagement from the employees. How many of you really hire for a cultural fit and not just provide lip-service?

Reference check as a formality – I get many calls from prospective employers about a candidate and the kind of questions they ask always gives me a feeling that they have already made their decision. Reference check is mostly a formality and waste of time both for them and myself. They rarely ask questions which direct towards ‘the challenges I have faced working with this person’ or the difficulty which I would have seen in the candidates work. The other challenge is that most of the references given by the candidate are the ones who know them well and the candidate is himself confident that they will get a great referral. The problem is that all of us know about this but still succumb to the same mistake. It is preferring ‘slow-death’ over ‘deep-change’ in our approach to background checks.

Interviewer bias – I for one advocate that the Managers in whose team the prospective candidate is to be hired should not be interviewing the candidate. You find that most Managers are biased towards people who they connect with personally or are either like them or inferior to them in skills. I’ve seen especially when the candidate is seemingly more experienced or skilled than the Manager, he will surely feel threatened and may not be comfortable hiring. The organization loses quite a talented individual because of the interviewer bias.   You should start hiring like they do in the centralized recruiting agencies like the armed forces etc., where the team leader is just provided with the recruit who he would have never met before or worked with. This goes a long way in cutting the bias. Try with one if you have the courage to take this route and see the difference.

Leadership ‘WTF’

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Leadership ‘WTF’

‘What To Focus’ (WTF) on is the continual dilemma confronted by today’s leadership. He is faced with conflicting needs from his role with questions like, should I be more focused on the ‘Result’ or ‘People’; ‘Control’ or ‘Create’?

leader-focus

When he starts driving for results relentlessly, he finds that in the process of doing so, he is not able to concentrate on the people dimension. Sees that the workplace becomes competitive, people are stressed and teamwork and collaboration becomes a casualty. And if he does start focusing on the people, results start to stutter as people settle into their comfort zones.

Similarly when he is growing the team there is a need to bring in processes, controls and monitoring mechanisms to keep the team from derailing and if he does that more the casualty is ‘innovation’. People are caught up in compliance and keeping the status quo and slowly over a period of time become risk averse as any deviation to processes gets penalized.

So the question is ‘WTF’?

Leaders must in an increasingly complex world strike a balance between competing roles and here are the four dimensions they must do always to keep the team at peak performance levels.

Stimulating Communication – The leader must create a stimulating communication climate – where there is free flow of feedback amongst the team members, people actively listen to gain understanding of each other and the work they do together. Such climate should also create an enhanced sense of ‘sensitivity’ where there is mutual respect.

Trust – The natural outcome of such a communication climate is of ‘openness’ where people have no hidden agendas and ‘collaborate’ with a win:win mindset. Integrity is a key ingredient which leaders can demonstrate to enhance trust where they walk-the-talk.

Accountability – An enhanced climate of trust builds a strong circle of safety for the team members, where they can start focusing their energies on seeking out opportunities than trying to fight the internal threat of mistrust, political behaviors and unhealthy competition. When people feel safe, they demonstrate a higher level of commitment and spend time to develop their competence necessary to achieve results.

Results – When the leader creates a highly accountable workplace built on trust, he ensures that people strive for results without a sense of being pushed. It ensures that there is a high level of ownership amongst the team members and they are willing to work hard to achieve their goals.

Now are you clear ‘WTF’?

7 Toxic People You Must Avoid At Work

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In an already stressful workplace where you grapple daily with deadlines, deliverables, reports, plans, reviews and meetings, it is important that you keep your sanity. This would mean that you should keep yourselves in a positive frame of mind. Easier said than done, what with so many toxic people to add to your woes. Here is a list of toxic people you must avoid at your workplace to keep things bright around you.

toxic people

Gossip monger – who is a carrier of half-truths, lies and quiet literally the news castor in your company.   The gossip monger has the uncanny knack of sucking you into their world of illusions and before you realize you are caught in their web of falsehood and lies. Just listening to their gossip may make you unwittingly a part of their story and at times become a casualty.

Narcissist – who is completely about ‘I’, ‘Me’, ‘Myself’ and is always concerned about projecting himself as self-righteous and who has monopoly on the truth. He is also the one who will do anything to achieve personal success, even if it means trampling a few people on the way. They are not open to any input or feedback and believe in the adage ‘my way or the highway’ in all their transactions.

Manipulator – who would likely use information about you or the work you do for personal gains. The manipulator is one who can distort facts to get things moving in his favor. They also indulge in political behavior and are the one’s who would use your innocent sharing of information against you or for their benefit.

Cynic – is the one who can drain you of your energy and enthusiasm while doing any task. They transmit negativity wherever they go. They tell you how things won’t work out or can’t be done all the time. Such people can with their cynicism make you doubt your own abilities and can be a big drain on self-confidence.

Judgmental – are the people who are constantly judging you and the environment of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’. They are the people who have a stereotypical view of the world around them and try to impose their judgment on others.   They also judge before having complete information leading to lot of conflicts. The judgmental people are also fixated in their approach and are found to be inflexible. They see the world with the colored glasses they carry.

Arrogant – are the people who are condescending in their behavior with others. They consider others to be not as capable as they are, often ridiculing and passing snide remarks. They are the ‘know all’ of any subject and are not open to others. They move around carrying a sense of privilege .or entitlement.

Victim – is the person who is constantly projecting to you as to how the world is against him. Narrating story after story about the wrongs which are happening to him because of the office environment. They are constantly on the lookout for people who are willing to listen to their sob stories and offer their shoulder. They can at times take away a lot of your time and also manipulate your sensitive nature to derive personal benefits.

6 Fears Leaders Need To Be Concerned About

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Isolation – office cliques pose the threat of isolation for any employee. When cliques and groupism exists, people live in constant fear of their exclusion from such groups. In some workplaces the groups are very well guarded and being part of it is not easy. The more the number of such groups, more the chances of office politics.Fears

Failure – very rarely do you find employees in today’s highly competitive world not fearing failure. While its almost a cliché to state that ‘failures are stepping stones to success’ how many of us are comfortable with failing? When stakes are high, this fear increases many notches and leads to high amount of stress in people. When failure is not acceptable in workplaces it constrains creativity and innovation. You would end up creating processes which convert humans into machines.

Rejection – is another fear which people are constantly trying to deal with. It leads them to be guarded in their communication and expression of ideas. Most often this fear is what leads to a total communication lock-down in teams and organizations.

Humiliation – especially in front of others is one of the most common ones which you see from your early schooling. People are constantly worried about the mistakes they would end up committing and the resultant humiliation they have to face in front of others, by way of reprimands or ridicule. This makes them resistant to compelling action.

Livelihood – in today’s corporate world where ‘money’ is the sole reason for businesses to be existent, people end up purely as a commodity which can be dispensed with easily to reduce costs in case of difficult times. The sword of being laid-off always is hanging over the head of employees and they are in constant fear of losing their livelihood and the support it provides to their families and self. This can lead them to be fiercely competitive and follow the principles of ‘dog eat dog’. It’s a matter of survival after all.

Feeling useless – when employees are not given enough opportunities or responsibilities to exhibit their talent and contribute, they tend to feel useless. This in turn leads to the fear of they being dispensed with easily.

The goal therefore for leadership is to address these fears and create a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and beliefs. By giving them the power to make decisions and offering trust and empathy, leader can create a Circle of Safety. When you create such an environment, employees are freed from the constant threats from within the organization and can start investing their energy to seize big opportunities which exist outside the organization.