How to be truly aware of your own behavioral shortcoming/s

How do you become aware of your own behavioral shortcoming in the organization where you are now? For example, you think that you have poor people skills. How would you validate this thought of having poor people skills?

The first thing that you should not do is to seek the opinion of those who are close to you in the organization where you are now. Why? This for the reason that you will not get an objective answer from them. Yes, they may tell you how they feel about your people skills but they may still try to hold back and not be totally honest to you.

So, the next move that you should do for you to get an honest to goodness idea about the real score on your people skills. You have to get the feedback of those who are working for you, with you and those who are higher than you. They are your subordinates, peers and supervisors.

Give them a survey form where they can answer open ended and close ended questions.  And based on the outcome of the survey you will be able to have an idea about the real score of your people skills. After having a true picture about your behavior shortcoming in your organization. It’s now time for you to solve it.

Effective managers, leaders and workers should always strive to have real awareness about who they really are in their organization. This impression of real awareness should not come from their own perception neither should this come from their friends in the organization. For if this is so they would not be able to properly solve the root cause of their behavioral shortcoming/s.  – Marino J. Dasmarinas

On respect and humane treatment of your workers

There’s a story about a priest who had a boorish behavior, being the head of his parish he would act as if he was the king and master. He would give unbendable instructions to the head of church organization and he wants it followed to the letter.

His world and instructions were the norms and laws of his parish even if it’s flawed. For the reason of his arrogance and lack of humility the spirit of volunteerism declined. And nobody was willing anymore to give their time to their local church. 

In so many ways a business organization is like a parish church organization. The priest who is the head and leader of the parish church is also like the manager/leader of a business organization. And the volunteer workers of the church are very much like the employees of a business organization.

What differentiates them is those who work for the business organization have a regular salary. However, even if they have regular salaries it doesn’t guarantee that they would work hard and stay longer in the organization. They should also be treated humanely and with respect otherwise they would resign.

Why? This is for the reason that workers are humans they have feelings and emotions.  They value organization and organizational managers/leaders that treats them with respect and dignity. Many business managers and leaders have this mindset that salary only is enough to make an employee work hard and stay in the organization.

But it doesn’t work that way, salary even if it’s big will not make a worker work hard and stay. Humane treatment, respect and the feeling that they are treated as a family would make them work hard and stay longer even forever in your organization. – Marino J. Dasmarinas 

Failure is an option in your organizational life

Janice is a supervisor in a pharmaceutical company. She is always conscious of not failing for the simple reason that she is afraid that her boss would reprimand her or issue her a memo.

Are you afraid to fail? Many managers, leaders and organizational workers are afraid to fail. They would not risk failing because they want to have a good reputation in their organization. Aside from that they don’t want to be labeled as somebody who failed.

But how would you learn if you’re afraid to fail and how would you achieve success if you are afraid to fail? How would you discover new things and ideas if you are afraid to fail? Many great and useful inventions came into being because of many failures.

Thomas Alva Edison, one of the greatest inventor if the not the greatest inventor the world has ever known had 1,000 unsuccessful attempts before he successfully invented the light bulb.

Steve Jobs the greatest inventor of the 21^st century was fired by Apple, the company that he founded. After he was fired he said that he was a failure but Steve Jobs did not give up. He persisted until he again achieved success and was rehired by Apple.  

 Denis Waitley a motivational speaker has this to say about failure: “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” 

Therefore, in your organizational life failure is an option for the simple reason that you will not achieve success without tasting failure first. You will not learn without failing and you wouldn’t be able to discover things that would help your organization grow without running into failure first.  

  

Thus, failure is an option in your organizational life and in your personal life as well. – Marino J. Dasmarinas 

Keeping calm under a heightened situation

Can you avoid a tense organizational situation from getting out of hand? For example, you were suddenly confronted by an angry co-worker who is shouting at you? Should you return the favor by shouting back? Or should you remain calm under that heightened situation.

Many would return the favor by shouting back because nobody wants to be insulted by anyone. This is our normal reaction we fight fire with fire and we will look for those who’ve thrown stone at us. But is this the right action to do? To fight anger with anger to get even with those who are angry with us?

Mahatma Gandhi an advocate of nonviolent resistance once said that, "An eye for an eye would only make the whole world blind.” What does this profound statement mean? This simply mean that we should always remain composed when we are under a tense, heightened and stressful situation. In this case being shout at by an angry co-worker.

It’s always not wise to angrily respond to somebody who is provoking you for the simple reason that it may get out of hand. And you end up being dragged into their level. What you should instead do is to always take the high road by not stooping to his/her level even if it’s oftentimes difficult to do.

For example, what would we get if we throw mud at those who are throwing mud at us? We end up being forced by them to react the way they want us to react. Thus we are no different from them.

The wisdom filled action that we should do under this stressful and heightened situation is to keep calm and never fight anger with anger. By doing so we simply show our composure, education and breeding.    

After the hot situation has died down as it always will. it’s now your time to civilly call the attention of the person and ask him/her why she did that unfortunate action. You could do this by using the proper channels of communication so that the misunderstanding could be properly and amicably ironed out. – Marino J. Dasmarinas  

Email or face to face communication?

Santiago is a millennial manager and he is the typical millennial who is well versed on modern communication. And he loves to maximize the usefulness of this modern vehicle of communication. He therefore sent out a memo to his staff mandating them to use email as the primary method of official communication. So that they could maximize and have full utilization of office time.  

They immediately adopted the instruction to use email as primary instrument of communication. However, after one month Santiago noticed disharmony amongst his subordinates, there were walls that divides them and team spirit was non-existent in the function of his people. 

Using email as a vehicle for office communication is helpful. However, it should not be utilized as the only method of official office communication. Why? For the simple reason that it would eventually create division, chaos and disagreement amongst the people working in the organization.

For example, when you only use email as the primary mode of communication it limits clear understanding on the issues being discussed. It hinders immediate actions, feedbacks and reactions. It will eventually promote disunity instead of unity and it will hasten the buildup of walls as a replacement for bridges of communication.  

Hard to believe? Simply imagine a family which is by the way a micro form of organization. The parents represent the managers/leaders and the children are the subordinates. Let us visualize them as using emails as their primary vehicle of communication.

This micro organization called family would soon have a very restrictive mode of communication. For the simple reason that email communication will not help in clearly clarifying family issues most especially sensitive family issues. It would sooner or later promote disunity, ambiguity and friction inside the family. Pretty soon there would be a broken family and wayward and misguided children.

Same goes for a real life organization when it uses email as the primary vehicle of communication instead of partnering it with face to face interactions. – Marino J. Dasmarinas    

Never capitalize on the vulnerability of a woman

There is a story about a married man and woman co-workers. The married man was newly transferred to the office where the married woman works. To make a long story short they somehow built a friendship, the woman would tell her life and office travails to the married man and vice versa.

Sensing her vulnerability, the married man violated the boundary that an Honorable and Godly man would not dare violate. Instead of simply listening and giving her advice and cutting it off right there to prevent the deepening of emotional ties between the two of them.

He instead transgressed the demarcation line that separates Honorable, Godly and Good men against wicked, bestial and devious men. To satisfy his wicked desire he pounced, captured and conquered the susceptible woman.

But how are you going to avoid this kind of sinful relationship that could even destroy you, your family and your marriage? If you’re a woman you have to be aware of this kind of situation. If you feel that you’re sinfully falling for a married man cut it off immediately otherwise you’ll get burned, be destroyed and may even be left with nothing.

If you’re a man never ever violate the norms of virtuous and good men. Never intrude into a territory that is not yours! Never take advantage of the vulnerability of a married woman else you will pay it with your life if the husband has a violent mind!  If the husband has a gentle and peaceful mind and would simply let go and let God. The unfolding of time will surely make you pay for it deeply and severely eventually. 

Whether we admit it or not adulterous, immoral and unethical relationships are happening inside the workplace environment. These relationships which violates the norms of ethics, morality and civility are usually initiated by men. Men whose real mindsets are hideous, evil and as low as the belly of the snake.

Wicked men who thinks that they can get away with the evil that they’ve done. Nonetheless, there’s no free ride in this world when it comes to evil deeds. If they’ll escape the judgment of this world, they’ll surely not escape the judgment of God.  – Marino J. Dasmarinas    

An Effective and good Manager/Leader is a good Listener

There is story about a father who was so focused on his responsibility to provide for his family. He would go to work early and go back home late. And his reason is he simply wants to provide the best that he could provide to his family that’s why he works doubly hard.

But in the process of working hard he was slowly but surely detaching himself from his wife and his children. There was limited personal interactions with them. Why? For the simple reason that he has no more time to listen to them. 

In an organizational setup a manager/leader should also be a good listener. What does this mean? This means that the leader/manager should allocate a portion of his time to listen to his subordinates to matter how busy he is.

The reason behind is through listening you will know the soul of your subordinates. Through listening you would also know the unseen events that happens in your organization which could have implication upon your leadership.

What would happen when you listen to your subordinates? They will look up to you and respect you more; they will see in you a mother or a father figure. Whom they can run into for support when something is bothering their minds.

What is the reward of this on your part as a leader/manager?  Your further cement your image as a good and effective manager/leader: A manager who listens and empathize to the plight of your subordinates.

Through listening you also make your job easier because your will gain the respect, loyalty and cooperation that any leader/manager would want from his subordinates. – Marino J. Dasmarinas