A 'clever' blog of a 'free' mind
Posts tagged personality
Leadership Management – Leadership styles, mindsets and behaviours !
0559 days
In my earlier blog post about various leadership styles, I mentioned that I would be writing more about the mindset that the leaders & teams would go through during various situation and sequences. So, here, in this article I am taking the opportunity to write more about that.
Lets quickly remind ourselves, the sequences we played in the earlier article and situation we had.
Tom, played the character of the Leader. Jerry, represents the team.
Now look at, and compare, how each one would have felt during the sequences we reviewed earlier.
Sequence 1 was about Tom pushing Jerry and and Jerry resists. Jerry needs to keep the balance but should not push back.
| Sequence 1 | ||
| Leader | Team | What do you get out of the situation ? |
| Gets satisfaction of driving the show. Feels happy to push. Does not think of ‘how’ part of work, but always demanding towards the result. |
Initially starts resisting. Silent resistance for sometime. Give up hope and thinks the leader is always unfair. |
Job gets done. Employee dissatisfaction. Not a long term solution. Less growth opportunities, less comfort. E.g., Useful in emergency or crisis situations. |
Sequence 2 was about Tom & Jerry both push each other and both needs to keep balance.
| Sequence 2 | ||
| Leader | Team | What do you get out of the situation ? |
| Wonders why the team is pushing back. Sometimes ego gets hurt. Feels confusion or irritation with resistance from Team. Gets uncomfortable. |
Feels good to resist the leader. Gets a feeling on being on equal footing. Sense of happiness initially, but turns to discomfort later on. |
New ideas ! Conflict situations / Deadlocks Loss of efficiency Not a long term solution Both parties feel stress / discomfort E.g., Useful in brainstorming situations. |
Sequence 3 mentioned about Tom doing various hand movements, that Jerry was to follow up accurately.
| Sequence 3 | ||
| Leader | Team | What do you get out of the situation ? |
| Sense of freedom to start with, however soon losing direction No commitment / disengaged leader No boundaries / control over flow of work / scope Ends up with ‘Why am I doing it?’ |
Sense of freedom to start with, looks easy to coordinate with leader Soon starts to wonder, where are we going ? Things look out of control Gives up hope and thinks the leader is not in line with team. |
Extremes and alternate solutions are likely to come out Mostly directionless team Cluelessness to Leader & Team both No relationship built up with team & leader E.g., Useful while exploring in unknowns or uncertain areas. |
Sequence 4 was about Tom & Jerry doing random hand movements in coordination and taking turns to lead.
| Sequence 4 | ||
| Leader | Team | What do you get out of the situation ? |
| Makes the work simpler to understand Feels part of team and grows the engagement Work coordination happens in sync Feels less work pressure and freedom |
Feels more responsible Enjoys following and experiencing leadership Feels comfortable and less stressed Experiences mutual understanding |
Shared accountabilities High quality job will be done Grooming up of next level will happen More engaged / trusted relationship Requires some iterations to get in ‘sync’ Sense of ease and comfort feeling develops Includes risk and requires time & investment from leaders E.g., Useful in day to day work, factory model working, building teams etc., |
Interesting read ?
Various leadership styles are required in various situations. However, one must understand that there is no set guideline of how a leader should behave in every situation, and I am sure you would have known this by now after reading above.
I hope you would be able to relate it to how you respond in situations and your own working style as leaders. Or you can hopefully relate this to what you see in your manager does and you wonder why things are happening in this way !
And as usual, a request to leave your comments or share what you think on the mindset of leaders and your experience with your team or your boss.
Leadership Management – Learning leadership styles from Tom & Jerry !
0571 days
In my last blog post about the leadership management, I talked about how to understand right signals in the environment and how to excel in unknown situations. In this blog post, I would like to talk about another game that we played where the understand of the leadership styles was elaborated quite effectively.
The game was called Tom & Jerry game !
All the Tom’s were representing the leaders / managers and the Jerrys were representing the Teams and the game was to understand the reactions of the team based on the way Tom leads the team.
Situations
The team members were put up in pairs standing in front of each other. One was acting as a Tom & other was supposed to act as a Jerry. The Tom’s were, as I said, leaders and was supposed to move his hands in few sequences and the Jerry was supposed to follow Tom’s movements as instructed in the sequence.
There were four different sequences we were supposed to follow and that represented each of the leadership styles.
Sequence 1 – Tom pushes and Jerry resists. Jerry needs to keep the balance.
As a part of this sequence, Tom & Jerry were supposed lock their palms standing in front of each other. Tom was supposed to push Jerry and Jerry was supposed to resist the push but not push himself.
The most important part of the aspect was that Jerry was supposed to keep the balance.
The situation unfolded as follows as per the timelines,
0th Second – Tom starts pushing Jerry. Jerry starts resisting and tries to keep the balance.
10th Second – Tom starts pushing more. Jerry starts thinking of ways to keep balance and some times takes a step back to avoid too much pressure.
20th Second – Tom keeps up the pressure. Jerry admits that pressure is too much and starts giving up.
30th Second – Tom keeps up the pressure. Jerry finally gives up admitting that he can not keep the balance.
Sequence 2 – Tom pushes and Jerry pushes too. Both needs to keep the balance.
As a part of the sequence, Tom & Jerry were supposed to lock their palms standing in front of each other. Tom & Jerry both were supposed to push each other, however this time, Jerry was allowed to push back with equal efforts.
Again, the most important part of the game was both Tom & Jerry should keep their balance.
The situation, this time, unfolded as follows as per the timelines,
0th Second – Tom starts pushing Jerry. Immediately, Jerry also stars applying pressure. Both start pushing each other.
10th Second – Tom and Jerry both starts putting pressure and starts increasing the pressure. Both start feeling the stress.
20th Second – Tom and Jerry both, reaching a point of high pressure, starts giving up as both admit both can not keep up the pressure.
Sequence 3 – Tom does various random gestures with his hand. Jerry needs to simply follow the movements accurately.
As a part of the sequence, Tom & Jerry were both supposed to stand in front of each other. Tom was supposed to make random gestures with his hand by moving in any direction. He should gradually increase the speed. Jerry was supposed follow and mirror the movements of Tom as much as he can, ensuring to be in sync always.
The situation, this time, unfolded as follows as per the timelines,
0th Second – Tom starts moving and weaving his hands in random directions. Tom feels freedom to choose the way he wants to move the hands. Jerry starts following him. Initially the rhythm seems to be good for both Tom & Jerry and both start enjoying the game.
10th Second – Tom starts increasing the speed of the movement, Jerry starts trying to catch up to the movements.
20th Second – Tom gets fast in doing the movements. Jerry struggles anticipating the moves of Tom and starts lagging behind in the synchronization.
30th Second – Tom & Jerry both are no longer in sync for the movements and the game finally ends as Jerry admits its very hard to catch up Tom and his movements.
Sequence 4 – Tom does random hand movements, Jerry follows him. After a while, Jerry starts doing some movements and Tom starts following him.
As a part of this sequence, Tom & Jerry were to share the responsibility of leading the movements alternatively. Tom was supposed to make random movements with his hands moving in any direction while Jerry will follow him. After a while, Jerry will take over the control and starts moving the hands randomly and Tom will follow him.
The most important part, was the rhythm should be maintained. The situation, unfolded as follows as per the timelines,
0th Second – Tom starts moving and weaving his hands in random directions. Tom feels freedom to choose the way he wants to move the hands. Jerry starts following him. The rhythm seems to be good for both Tom & Jerry and both start enjoying the game.
10th Second – Tom gives the control to Jerry and Jerry starts moving the hands on his own, while Tom starts following him. The rhythm still continues to be good and synchronization looks still good.
20th Second –Tom takes the control back and Jerry is happy to keep following the movements of the Tom. This time, although, he is successful in following Tom for almost all of his movements.
30th Second – Tom gives the control to Jerry and starts following him.
The game actually continues for some more time, however does not show any signs of problems from either Tom or Jerry to continue this way. Ultimately, winning the game by meeting the objective.
In all the above four games, the leaders (Tom) used various leadership techniques to try and get the results and obviously Jerrys (teams) did have various emotions, feelings while following the Leaders. Some, ending in failures, some ending in anger and few ending in confusion, ultimately some of them ending in great satisfaction.
Obviously, I want to write more on the way the teams have felt in above, but looks this post is going to be huge if I continue to write. So, may be I would keep the explanation of the human behaviour and mindset in a separate post for tomorrow / later.
However, till then, please let me know what you feel would have gone through the minds of all Jerry’s and Tom’s under each of above sequence.
I would like to hear your views too !
Leadership Management – Understanding right signals & responding accordingly !
2588 days
Continuing from my posts about the Leadership management, here, in this article, I would like to touch base upon one interesting game that we played. The game was all about understanding how one should understand the situation when he / she gets into a new situation / team or a company.
The game, as it progresses, uncovers how the mental situation of a person is in, when he is thrown into a new situation.
Lets understand the characters and rules of the game as follows,
Leader – the person who is newly put in the situation or given a charge of a completely new team
Team – the group of people who got a new leader and they are supposed to assist him settle down
Manager – the person who has hired the leader and has promised guidance in settling the team
Now, I would go about mentioning the situation and the specific rules and objectives as follows.
Situation 1 & Rules
All the team members are sitting in a room. The managers comes and introduces the Leader to the team and asks the team to help. The task that is assigned to the Leader is to identify an object in the room. In this situation an office bag of one of colleague and the team is supposed to help him, without speaking a word.
The rules of the game were simple and as follows,
-
The manager will explain the ‘goal’ to the leader and asks the leader to take help of the team to move ahead in his goal
-
The team was asked to observe the movement of the leader in the room and clap if the leader is moving towards the intended object and remain silent if he is moving away from the object.
-
Most important rule was that the team members were not allowed to speak or answer any questions of the leader. If the leader speaks and asks, they were only supposed to smile and follow rule 2.
-
The leader does NOT know, the rule 2 & 3.
Very interesting scenario !
I would now try to write the exact discussion that happened between the leader and the team members as follows.
Leader enters the room and to everyone : Hello everyone. My name is ___ and I have been appointed as your leader here. I just had a discussion with my manager and he has asked me to come and talk to you all. He mentioned to me that there is some object that I need to find here. Does anyone know what is it or where is it? Would anyone like to help me?
As per rule, all the team members look at him, keep silent and smile ! The Leader is slightly confused and goes to Team members and asks them directly.
Leader to Team member 1: Hi, what is happening? Please can you help me here. My manager has asked me to look for some object but I am unable to find. Please can you help me?
Team member 1, smiles !
Leader to Team member 2: Hi, your other colleague is not helping me. Would you be able to help me?
Team member 2, smiles !
Leader to Team member 3 & 4: Guys, you have to help me here. I am not able to understand what the other guys are trying to say. They are just smiling looking at me and its not being helpful. Can you help me here?
Team member 3 & 4 smile ! The leader then goes to the Manager.
Leader to Manager: Hi boss, I think the team is not helping me. I am asking them questions but they are unable to help or answer to me at all. This is just being plain uncooperative. Do you have any suggestions for this?
Manager to Leader: I think there is some miscommunication. I had asked the team to help you in their own capacity so they must be trying to help you. Why don’t you go and observe for some time what they are trying to tell you.
Leader goes back to the team and asks again, whether anyone knows what he was supposed to find. However, finds no luck so goes back to manager.
Leader to Manager: Boss, I am getting frustrated here. The team does not cooperate me and I am not able to achieve my goal here. The things are so frustrating to me. You need to come and help me here.
Manager to Leader: Try to understand and observe the pattern. Find out what signals they are giving you. I am sure they are responding to you in some way so I suggest you go back and observe more.
Leader, this time goes back and listen to the sound the team is making when he is moving in some direction. Remember, the team was told to clap if the leader is moving in right direction and be silent if he is moving in some other direction.
After a while of observation, the leader goes back to the Manager.
Leader to Manager: I see some kind of pattern in their clapping. If I move to north, they keep on clapping and if I move to south, they stop clapping. What kind of trend is this? Am I missing something?
Manager to Leader: Yeah, probably you need to figure that out yourself.
So, the leader goes back to the team floor and does some more observation and this time he understands the fact that the team is clapping when is nearing to the desired object (read goal) and keeping silent when he is moving away.
Eventually, within minutes he finds out the exact object and everyone claps !
Now, lets take a pause and analyze what the mental state of the Leader would have been while the entire above process.
-
The leader expected the team to cooperate with him, in the language that he understands.
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When the leader did not understand what the team was saying (i.e., clapping, being silent, not responding), he felt a bit irritated and went to on to talk to team members directly.
-
When that too did not work out, the leader’s frustration grew and probably went to the point of breaking.
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However, with a little bit help from Manager, when he started to understand the language of the team members, he could find his goal easily.
-
In the end, he understood that the team was actually co-operating with him every time, however he was unable to understand them. It was not other way round.
-
Leader went through a very interesting and beautiful mind transition from frustration to success !
Situation 2 & Rules
Situation 2 is very similar to the Situation 1, however only one key rule was changed. The managers comes and introduces the Leader to the team and asks the team to help. The task that is assigned to the Leader is to identify an object in the room. In this situation a mobile phone kept in the corner of the room and the team is supposed to help him.
The rules of the game were simple and as follows,
-
The manager will explain the ‘goal’ to the leader and asks the leader to take help of the team to move ahead in his goal
-
The team was asked to observe the movement of the leader in the room and Be Silent if the leader is moving towards the intended object and clap if he is moving away from the object. Exactly opposite of Situation 1.
-
This time, if the leader asks the question. The team members were allowed to answer directly.
-
The leader does NOT know, the rule 2 & 3.
Now, this time the situation gets even more interesting. Keeping in mind the earlier situation that the Leader had gone through. The story goes as follows.
The Leader enters the room and tries to understand how the team is responding to his behaviour. He first tries to follow the claps but soon understands that the claps are not taking him to any specific direction, however the silence is. So he follows the silence and nears the object and picks up in a quick time.
While it took almost 20 mins for the first situation to be resolved i.e., the leader finding the intended object, it took the same person about 5-7 minutes to find the object second time. Even though it was smaller and was at a relatively remote place.
So lets look at few observations in Situation 2.
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The leader did NOT ask any team members directly. He assumed that they will not help if he asks the question verbally.
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He tried to understand the pattern and quickly understood that the pattern is different than the first situation.
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He was able to grab the object in a quicker time than the Situation 1.
Essentially, the morale of the situations are,
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When you enter new situations. Its good to carry your experience and ideologies, but its sometimes wrong to expect others to fall in line as you need.
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It is essential to understand how the system works before applying your working techniques or forcing anything on the team.
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Once you understand the system, you can always get into it and achieve your goal.
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Most importantly, people do change so never carry perceptions (especially –ve) with you for long.
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Remember ! Behaviour could be misleading but intent is never wrong, so get to the intent and do not make judgements based on behaviour.
So if we consider the situations in retrospect and find out how we can relate to our real life examples of events such as moving to a new team, taking the charge of a new project, joining a new organization etc., I am sure you would be able to find few similarities.
Would you mind sharing few of them with me here?
Leadership Management – Identifying true self & false persona !
2599 days
In my last post about the leadership management, I wrote about the negotiating skills and how we, as humans, try to play for the win/lose situations when we are negotiating for our goals. It was interesting to reflect back on us again, as humans, on what makes us perform this kind of behaviour.
This interesting aspect takes us to inspect ourselves and differentiate between what we really are and what others think of us as i.e., what we project to be. Essentially, what we project to others is our ‘persona’, and believe me, we show plenty of them within us !
More or less, we in our professional or in the personal life, we portray various kind of personas depending on situations and we do so mostly to get our work done. Have a look at the following personas and the kind of behaviour that is displayed by the person wearing the persona, it might help you relate back to your own behaviours.
Persona |
Behaviour seen / bumper sticker ! |
typical observations |
| Conscientious | Do the right thing … | In high risk environments |
| Supercompetent | Here, let me do it … | Less risky or wants to show off |
| Devoted | I will always be here for you … | Care taker, family man / woman |
| Drama queen/king | You would not believe the day I had … | Super excitement in all things that are done |
| Performer | The show must go on … | Calling themselves practical thinkers, do not think of effects |
| Victim | Why me ? | Passive thinking, resistive nature |
| Critic | I will tell you what is wrong … | Wants to do, but points negative things first |
| Loner | By myself … | Super performer, normally thinks others do not align with me |
| Space out | Huh… what ? | Attitude ! |
| Mr Nice Guy | Sure ! Yes ! | Wants to be in the right side of things always |
| Stoic | I can take it … | Tries to put a brave face but have fear inside |
| Hostile | Out of my way … | Puts too much pressure even for simple things |
| Self-righteous | I will never … | Man of principles, apparently |
| Rebel | Not me, man ! | Will do things in my own way .. |
| Shy | I will wait for my turn … | Why should I speak now, I will tell only if asked, even if its important |
| Chameleon | Whatever you say … | Flatterer, always says things, but does little |
While wearing the personas itself is not a bad thing as such and we may need to wear them as the situation demands. However, what we should avoid is to have the persona overtake our actual self and make us believe in what we are not !
In case you are unable to find out what personas you have wore in the past then the following questions, given to us as a part of exercise, may help.
– What about specific people make you not connect with them ?
- Kind of people that you easily connect with ?
- What are some of the things that you resist in others?
- What are these things that I resist in myself ?
- Identify 5 examples of where you have demonstrated the same behaviour / action that you resist in others ?
- What are the 3/4 personas I use to,
a) To be accepted / loved
b) To get the job done
- When did you make your 1st appearance ?
- What are you most proud of ?
- What are you most afraid of ?
- What do you think will happen to <your name> if you are not in charge ?
- Whenever you take over, what are you always sure of getting from the environment ?
Think of the answers for the above questions and hopefully they will help you realize more about yourself.
As I mentioned in my last post about leadership, one of the most important aspect of leadership is to realize yourself and know more about your own behaviours, personas and intents about your own working style. Knowing about the personas help you understand what state of mind you are in and are you your real self or not, thus helps you take proper decisions in every step that may benefit you in the end.
So, try out the answers for the questions above and see what you realize about yourself !
Learning Emotional Intelligence …
0694 days
by Swapnil
in Mind thoughts
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 judgment 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 behavior 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 