Learning Emotional Intelligence …
Mar 15th
Friday was an interesting day for me at work …… a day in training !
Now, you would ask how could a full day training be interesting? Yes, it was interesting because the training was on “Emotional Intelligence at work place” and the topic itself was very engaging. It was all about taking a day off to know yourself, know how to deal with others, use your strengths to deal with emotions of yourself as well as others and build effective relationships.
The training involved a lecture from the trainer (details at the bottom) over the “emotional intelligence” of oneself, how to identify the various emotions you are going through and how to deal with its state. It also involved a quick self-evaluation using a question – answer technique.
As usual, I would like to put in here, on my blog, the gist of the training and what I learnt during the training.
So, to start with, do you know what is an “Emotion”? It seems so simple, but when asked this question during the training, probably none could give an exact answer. The answers were such as, ‘An emotion is a feeling.’ , ‘An emotion is a thought in one’s mind.’. The answer that the trainer gave was ‘An emotion is an energy within the body that creates an awareness of its state through feeling’, which probably was a sensible answer !
There are two kinds of emotions that one can experience. Simple enough to guess, they are Good emotions and Bad emotions. Good emotions (happiness etc) are the ones that the body likes to carry and the Bad emotions (fear etc) are the ones that the body does NOT like to carry.
The mind is an invisible force that resides within the human body and assists the human being to experience various states of emotions. The mind plays an important part in managing the emotional state of a person.
The equation is simple, Mind is a slate on which the external situation, understood by 5 senses (see, listen, hear, touch, taste) and governed by one’s intelligence, intellect, memory, beliefs & values create an emotion that is visible through the gesture of a human being.
Now, what does EI tells us?
EI has 5 basic competencies as follows,
Self awareness
Self awareness is all about being aware of the emotional state of oneself. It also extends to expressing the emotions at right time and not suppressing them within yourself. If you are getting angry, upset, disappointed or frustrated, then its essential to identify the state of emotion and take a corrective action immediately.
Self management
This is all about managing one’s emotions and how you appear to others.
For example, if in a meeting, due to some lengthy arguments and counter arguments you are feeling angry, then its better to announce that I am getting angry, and I suppose I need to take a break. than continuing with the meting, which is likely to affect your judgement and might end into something you might repent !
Self motivation
Self motivations tells you to have a passion in life. It tells you to discover your own passion and pursue it in order to keep you motivated in life. It suggest you to have a goal in life (personal & professional) so you can go all about pursuing the goal. Doing the job you love and loving the job you do is the mantra of keeping one highly motivated.
Empathy
Empathy is all about getting in someone else’s shoes and DO nothing ! Yes, do nothing !
It suggest you should empathize with others to understand what situation they are going through before taking any decision about anyone. It helps you to understand what pains or problems someone is going through and how it might affect someone’s performance at work.
It also suggest that one should empathize with oneself. It helps understand what emotional state you are going through and what situation you are under. Self empathy is all about giving time to yourself every day to ensure you are in a good emotional state to realize your situation control limits.
Effective relationships
Effective relationships is the relationship that is Goal Oriented. In the discussion, after much debate, it was convinced that all relationships you can think of are goal oriented. An effective relationship is also one the one that comes with expectations and the one where the expectations are met.
Its recommended that you have a clear understanding of emotions with whom you get into an effective relationship.
Finally, at the end of the training, it was asked of us to create our own definition of EI, in exact 40 words and I could come out as follows,
EI is all about knowing and motivating yourself, controlling your behaviour irrespective of situation type, understanding others better, relate to them for betterment of your social and work life that could translate into more happiness and help earn more money and growth.
As I said earlier, its been a very interesting day on Friday in training. More thoughts on various topics within the EI will hopefully follow soon on my blog.
As usual, let me know your comments 
Thoughts on retirement from work … of my dad !
Mar 4th
Recently, my father, (Prof. R. K. Deshpande) retired from long and distinguished service service as a Botany Lecturer in Science college and on the occasion of his retirement and I had a privilege to be part of his last day at his work and the small facilitation by his department in his honour.
It was a wonderful occasion of honouring a career that spanned over almost 3 decades and with various achievements, it was great to see his colleagues acknowledging his contribution to their career, work and the legacy he has been leaving behind.
His work life has taught few very important lessons especially to me which I would like to remember forever my life and practice the.
“Problems will always be there, you need to find a solution and move ahead.”
A career spanning over three decades, for sure, would have had its fair share of troubles and problems. However, he had always followed the principle of facing the problems and finding his way out rather than worrying over the problems and their impacts. He is of firm belief that every problem is mitigable and we must strive to solve the problems and ensure they do not arise later.
“Discipline, hard work & foresight are three pillars of success.”
Discipline, hard work & foresight are very important aspects for getting a success in life. He taught us the fact that all three must go together if you want to achieve greater success in life. If you leave one out, then you are in a danger of not fulfilling your potential.
“Have your own principles, thoughts and be firm with them.”
My father always encouraged us to take our own decisions in life then be it the choice of school. college, subjects or courses or even wife. He had given us a greater freedom of ensuring that we are responsible for making the decisions that affect our life. He had never enforced his opinion or rule on us which we simply had to abide by. He is a man of principles and has followed them all his life and had never compromised on them and so does he encourages us to do in our respective lives.
You would not believe the fact that although I was a student in the same college he was a lecturer in, he gave me a freedom NOT to choose his subject for my college education and go for other subjects !
“Do something that interests you, apart from your job !”
My dad has been a versatile personality. Although he had been a teaching professional all his life, his multi faceted personality had shades of being an excellent singer, a very good musician, a very capable stage actor and a very social person. He had composed many songs, given a voice to them and had his music shows at quite a few places across Maharashtra. He also had a keen interest in acting and had played various characters in various stage plays and again had toured across various places in Maharashtra. He still does have a passion for music and arts and that is something amazes me of his personality.
Hats off to his work in the creative field and I can only wish I could have so many talents in me !
Papa, You are a great human being, a humble man and source of inspiration for our family and we all love you !
How to live before you die?
Feb 20th
Inspiring talk from Steve Jobs (Apple CEO)
How to live before you die? – Steve Jobs
While stumbling through the TED talk videos, I came across the following video talk of Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) and I must admit, its nothing short of inspiring.
He talks about three little stories he experienced in his life and how he has came through these experiences and even stronger.
This is really worth watching, so please tune in and watch this !
Cheerio !
Hello World Windows Phone 7 Series ! Is been a very long wait … but worth it !
Feb 16th
Yes, finally Microsoft took the curtains out of the much awaited, much anticipated next version of the Windows Mobile Phone platform and its been named as Windows Phone 7 Series.
There is nothing new that I would be writing here mentioning the plus points / minus points about the platform and Engadget has done a wonderful job of keeping everyone informed of the unveiling of the new platform.
Hands on & impressions – Video
![windowsphon7[1]](http://sollerthoughts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/windowsphon71.jpg "windowsphon7[1]")
I personally can not wait but to try out the new Windows Phone OS in my hands.
Looks like Microsoft has done it again. Well done guys !
Have breakfast … or … be breakfast!
Feb 12th
BY Y. L. R. MOORTHI
[Management Views from IIMB is an exclusive column written every two weeks by faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore]
[This very good article was forwarded to me by one of my friends and original article is found on http://www.iimb.ernet.in/node/1820]
Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.
Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling standalone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.
Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel’s parent) are breathing easy you can’t be farther from truth.
"What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won’t compete on pure audio? So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."
In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today’s competitor. Today’s competitor is obvious. Tomorrow’s is not.
Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"
In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget
So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton’s law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC’s price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!
India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film’s competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.
Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years.When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don’t remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.
One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!
Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.
Success is not something to wait for; it’s something to work for…