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Ideas and Concepts Which Cause Stress In People

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In today’s digital age ‘Stress’ has been at the root of many lifestyle diseases and a cause of depression in people. The constant bombardment of certain ideas and concepts which are supposedly an indicator of you leading a good life is a primary contributor in enhanced stress levels. You might find some of my views bordering on the preposterous, but I choose to let loose. Most from the following list contradict or shall I say conflict with the basic human tendency or instinct of survival. These contradictions are the one’s I found lead to stress. They are good to talk about in motivational workshops and lectures and books, however is possible only once you have reached the stage of self-actualization as in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Let me list a few;

1. Follow your passion – What is that?
2. Do what you love – Yeah! I love to idle but for sure I’m going to get screwed if I do 🙂
3. Have life goals – I’m struggling to have a life and you talk about goals!
4. Think positive – Don’t want to hear that when I’m down in the dump and trying to cope
5. Just let go – Let me let go of your nonsense 🙂
6. Keep smiling – Do you smile when you are down and hurt?
7. Be creative – All what I do is create –  I wouldn’t like to go by your definition
8. Take initiative – The last time I took an initiative I was S*****d
9. Build consciousness – Please explain, I’ve lost my consciousness in the process
10. Do you have fitness goals? – My grand dad lived 90 years without having one
11. Watch what you eat – I prefer tasting and relishing what I eat
12. Mind your carbs – I’m stressed searching for a low carb diet
13 . Mind your calories – I ended up buying expensive tech. to keep track and still paying for it
14. Be normal – Basically you are telling me to be as you want me to be.  I’m sick doing that all my life
15. Be aware – I think I’m able to get back home safely without losing my way
16. Work SMART – Nice way of telling me to work my b**t off 🙂
17. 100 places to visit before you die – Yeah sure! why don’t you buy me the tickets
18. 20 books you must read in your lifetime – Are you saying the rest can be put in the bin?

All I’m saying is – don’t stress out trying to conform to how others define great life to be.  We all are perfectly capable of working to meet our needs from time to time; have come this far without all the shit being dished out and will do well without it as well.

 

Is Your Organizational Learning Designed To Buttress The Existing Order?

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As with today’s education system, most of organizational learning seems to be designed to buttress the existing order or what we call as normal. There are pre-defined conditions and templates which are called ‘expectations’ and ‘norms’ and the educationists seem to channelize the student towards those norms. All the while calling it a workshop where you can reflect and learn by experience.

While this approach helps in maintaining a social order replete with high levels of repetition and redundancy, the question we need to ask is “Is the normal good enough to ring in new discoveries; new ways of thinking; a lateral approach?

Nah! Most of the learning systems have an agenda to condition the subjects a.k.a students to norms and condition them to day-in and day-out perform actions which will ensure a pre-defined goal. The irony is; all the while the stated expectations is to enable a paradigm shift (a much abused term in corporate circles).

I’ve observed this forced approach when I interacted with organizational leaders while designing a program, even on a topic like ‘Creative Thinking and Problem solving’. They seem to drive the agenda and want creativity in their employees as they perceive or want it to be. Isn’t it ridiculous? At times the sponsors remain present in such programs and keep a close watch on the proceedings so that their agenda is achieved. The problem is that the employee or the student is not naïve as they believe and can easily see through that they are being driven towards meeting a particular social or organizational agenda.

This is the reason why they resist external interventions or help from experts and have internal learning and development departments which help them control the process of education.

The problem with such an approach is that the whole learning and development or educational system loses credibility. The student senses and calls out the ‘hypocrisy’. Sadly, people end up being conditioned as machines whose assembly line approach to life doesn’t greatly contribute to quantum growth. So much so that even organizational culture and values are created to buttress the existing order or the normal.

The fact is that quantum leaps have always happened when you steer clear of the ‘normal’.

Is your organizational learning buttressing the existing order? Can it provide you with a platform for quantum growth?

How To Avoid The ‘Halo Effect’ In Meetings?

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“The halo effect in groups is evident in the standard practice observed in meetings which gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and assertively, causing the others to line up behind them” says Daniel Kahneman. I couldn’t agree more.

I often find during meetings the discussions often veer towards the thoughts and opinions expressed by people who are first off the block or are vocal to the point of being domineering. Especially so when such opinions come from people who lead the meeting are in a position of power in relation to the others. This gets confirmed by my observations from the ‘mountain survival’ activity which we facilitate in both our team and leadership programs; where a group is required in consensus to rank in order of importance twelve items which will help them survive.

Often valuable information from the less vocal and passive members is missed by the whole group as the meeting gets dominated by those who are vocal leading to their failure.

However, there are teams which succeed or come close to expected outcomes! This happens when you help the team decorrelate errors of judgment arising from the ‘halo effect’. We ask each team member to rank the items in the order they feel is important for their survival and then each one is provided with full opportunity to explain the rationale behind their individual judgments. As in the book ‘wisdom of crowds’, individuals tend to do very poorly, but pools of individual judgments do remarkably well. When we look at individual ranking sheets they seem to be way off the mark but the average of all rankings comes closer to the solution. The teams which follow this method almost always have the survival advantage.

How can we then reduce the negative impact of the ‘halo effect’ in our meetings?

We use a simple rule while we facilitate organizational leadership meetings (especially when we work with the executive on Goals, Objectives and Key Results). Before any issue is discussed, all members of the team should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. We provide them with post-it pads and ask them to put all their thoughts and in complete silence. This procedure makes good use of bringing the value of the diversity of knowledge and opinions in the group. It cuts the individual bias from influencing the course of discussions leading to productive outcome.

You must however be willing to invest time in such a process which most teams sadly don’t commit to.

Would you have any more ideas on reducing the ‘halo effect’ from your meetings?

Work-Life Balance Issues? Learn ‘Assertiveness’

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“Let’s say you have already committed to your Family that you would come back home early and take them out for a movie and dinner thereafter, and suddenly as you are about to step out of office, your boss calls you for a meeting”.work-life-balance-concept--balance-achieved

9 out of 10 would try and excuse themselves from the family commitment and stay back in office ‘though reluctantly’.

What makes them do this?  Why is it that people tend to take their family for granted? Why do people give the last priority to family, while claiming that all what they are doing is for the family sake?

Is this what is affecting the ‘Work-Life Balance’ for people?

What do you think are the possible remedies?………..

I for one think that if people learn to be or are taught ‘Assertiveness Skills’ from an early age will surely be able to achieve work-life balance.

 

Idiots Can’t Lie! – Tips To Identify If Someone Is….

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Lying takes more cognitive effort than being honest. You have to work hard to keep your facts straight. Once you start down the path of lying, you not only have to remember facts, but also the facts you kept changing and how.

Imagine that you told one of your friends that you bought an item for far less than the actual price, you not only have to reveal where you got the offer, till when does the offer exist and so on. Now consider this, if someone else, let’s say a common acquaintance asks you about the same item you will have to come up with a story which is consistent with the lie you told earlier, lest you get caught. Needless to say, it takes great amount of effort to remember all the lies you end up telling which at times leads to immense cognitive overload. To cover one lie you end up telling another one and so on.

Idiots

To build on the lies you tell you need high levels of creative thinking, after all the story you build need to sell and must be believable. Most of us are also endowed with a sense of identifying deception however we rarely trust our instincts and start to rationalize such thoughts as mere imagination. Here are some of the tips for you to identify if someone is lying. These tips can be useful for you even in interviewing prospective candidates for a job as well.

Tip #1: Less on specifics – Someone telling the truth will be providing you with a lot of details of the story. If its about a trip they will be able to recall all the details of the journey, like what they saw, heard, landmarks, colors et al. A liar will try to be as vague as possible on the details, including time because these are difficult to construct and then keep consistent for future repetition. A great example is of the cops who frequently ask questions related to detailing of an incident to the witnesses or the possible convict. They ask you to reconstruct the events repeatedly over a few days to see if you are consistent with your story.

Tip #2: Excuse of a poor memory – People who tell the truth don’t have a problem remembering as they have lived it or experienced the event or occurrence. It comes pretty easy to them to repeat as it is a true event. However, liars frequently excuse themselves of a poor memory. They will use terms like “don’t exactly remember”, “Not sure”, “mostly”, “broadly” which are indicative of an effort to keep it safe and vague. In reality it is not their poor memory that is the problem but their distress in constructing a story of an event which did not occur.

Tip #3: Keeps the story short or vague – Keeping it short helps to overcome the effort of building a string of lies. When the story is vivid and longer, it is coming mostly out of true events. Lies have to be created in the head and doing it on the fly would mean you can’t get to be elaborate. While people prefer brevity in conversations, it pays to remain patient and allow the person to narrate as much details as possible and without interruption. For an interviewer, it is important that he remains absolutely silent after asking a question and allow the person to exhaust himself of the narration he gives. A story of true occurrence will take a longer time than a lie.

Tip #4: Will be full of contradictions – A true story will bind together well than a series of lies. When you allow the person to keep on talking you will find that slowly but surely the person who lies will start making contradicting statements about the event. True events will not have such contradictions. Therefore, when you have a series of interviews scheduled in your organization, it is important to keep the questions same and exchange notes to check for consistency. I find that rarely do we ask the very same questions. Each interviewer wants to showcase his ability in asking the most difficult questions than the previous one.

Tip #5: Thinks hard before answering questions – A liar would most obviously have to think through and construct a string of lies before he sets out to answer your questions. You must keenly observe the person immediately after you ask a question and if you find that there is a long pause, it could well be an indication that what is being told is not true or are missing facts.

Tip #6: Is fidgety or in a hurry to end the conversation – An honest person is willing to spend a lot of time having a conversation with you and is enthusiastic about narrating the whole story. He has to be interrupted to be stopped. A liar on the other hand will be always in a hurry to end the conversation and move on to another subject or appear to be fidgety all the time. Watch the end of your conversation and if you find a sense of relief it is an indication that the person was not wholly truthful. However, if the person is happy to continue the conversation, most likely that what he is talking about is from true events.

Tip #7: Talks slowly and deliberately – A liar constructs sentences with lot of care in order to make sure that he doesn’t get caught. He would also pause a lot before every sentence is uttered. While we have been led to believe that when someone speaks slowly and deliberately, the person is thoughtful and intelligent, the fact is that the intelligence is being used to construct stories which may not be wholly true. An honest person will be in the flow and is not deliberate in his speech.

Who do you like ‘An honest idiot’ or ‘a brilliant liar?

3 Leadership Pitfalls You Should Avoid

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Ego, Stubbornness and Playing favorites are by far the biggest stumbling blocks of leaders in achieving greater progress.

Leadership Pitfalls

Ego – blocks your ability to be open and honest in your assessment of your self and the situation you are in.  It comes in the way of your ability to ‘Listen’ even to your own conscience.

Stubbornness – impacts your ability to be flexible and adaptable, to the point of even compromising on the larger vision or goals

Playing favorites – stops you from providing space to the deserving

Even the great Mahatma Gandhi and I think many more of the great leaders of our times were at some point afflicted with this problem. In the Epic Mahabharata, Dhrithrashtra suffered from the same.

Agree?

There Is ‘NO’ Such Thing As An Original Thought

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Lot of people struggle with the idea of coming up with an ‘original’ thought.  They want their ideas and thoughts to be such that it has never been heard before or thought before.  In this quest they never end up coming up with any.  They are also the ones who ridicule others who come up with ideas which have been built up on accumulated knowledge and experiences of others over the years.  You see this everywhere, at work, in school, at home or any group work. Original ideas

An ‘original idea’ is a myth.  There is no such thing as an original. It doesn’t come up from thin air.  It is always built on past experiences and cumulative knowledge from the universe.

So, stop running behind or putting efforts to find a truly original idea.  Just be comfortable with the fact that none is original.

At least it will help you to implement and experience what you have built.

Does Cognitive Dissonance Help Sustain Organization Culture?

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Cognitive dissonance describes a condition of stress, or a feeling of internal discomfort caused by conflicting ideas, values, beliefs or practices. Essentially, this is a situation where two or more opposing thoughts are causing psychological discomfort.cognitive dissonance

This has been often considered as a stressor at workplace as it’s believed that we humans have an inner drive to maintain harmony between attitudes, beliefs and practices. When faced with an internal clash or those cognitions, our natural reaction is to reduce or eliminate it to prevent emotional discomfort.  Often expressing dissonance has been considered negative and people have been encouraged to fall in line inspite of the great internal conflict they experience.

I believe that cognitive dissonance is an elixir which sustain a strong culture.  It provides a contrarian view and a constant challenge to the existing values and beliefs.  When people are allowed to express themselves, it relieves them of the stress of internal conflict and also provides an opportunity for them to validate their values and beliefs against the group needs.  The more you defend against such views the more firm your belief in your own values and beliefs become.  At times it will also help you to understand whether such values are helping you in the current times or there is a need for change as well.

Often people choose or are forced to suppress such dissonance just in order to maintain harmony.  This often leads them to tell themselves comforting lies about the situation.  The fact that they do not agree and have been suppressed is what makes such lies the primary cause of stress in people today.  Not just corporate workers but children, students, parents, family et al. suffer from such comforting lies every day of their life.  The constant conflict between opposing values is what strengthens the culture and provides it with increasing evidence of what works and doesn’t.

Facing up to ‘Uncomfortable truths’ is what helps to bring about a positive change.  The choice of course is yours…

Agree?

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?