Why Managers need to study Psychology ?

 When I studied graduation, we had a mandatory course on Psychology, which happens to be one of my favorite subjects. Little did I realize that the concepts come handy at a future date in personal life and more importantly at work place.

There is an application of psychology at every level in organization, but more importantly for people in managerial position need it in managing people working for them. Not many managers are fortunate to have a course in psychology in college. Also I feel organizations are doing little to train their aspiring and performing managers on psychology. This in turn leads to mistakes in understanding people in the roles assigned.

1)      Stick model of motivation is the only model:

Psychology text books contain this metaphor of a donkey that is carrying load. In order to make it move, there are two methods to motivate it to move. One is feeding it with a carrot as a reward. Other method is to hit it with a stick as a punishment for not moving. This is popularly known as Carrot and Stick model. Unfortunately, lot of managers think staff perform only when they are subject to fear and in face of punishment. Little do they understand that there are situations and individuals who get demotivated by overdose of punishment.

2)      Senior members do not need be motivated:

Managers expect the senior members or middle level managers to be self-motivated. Self-motivated individuals usually draw motivation from the work, the challenge, the task and various other things. But the managers fail to understand that in absence of motivating factors around and at lean patches in careers, even the self-motivated seniors need to be motivated.

3)      How we make a person feel:

Managers at times underestimate and at worst fully ignore how they make the person feel. Making remarks in front of a broader group belittling a certain person, does not help anyone. It not only demotivates person, but also make him feel ignored, undervalued. So managers have to be very careful about the impact their negligent remarks have on their staff.

4)      Pat on the back:

When a staff performs some good work, manager thinks he just did his job. This can put-off the staff who is expecting some nice words about the good work done by him.

5)      Assuming everyone has same priorities in life:

This is the common mistake made. There will be staff who can afford to devote lot of their time to work either due to their ambitions, life stage or priorities. Assuming and expecting everyone to have same set of priorities will only be detrimental.

6)      Gender Sensitivity:

Common mistake made by some managers is to deliver unisex response to both gender staff in all situation. Unfortunately they think that they are being fair by being gender neutral. Study of psychology can help understand how each gender takes things,

These are just a subset of many other places where study of Psychology can help managers perform their job better.

What makes Rama so great?

Ramayan is the timeless epic and the very name means the journey of Rama. The journey of Rama becomes so impactful because fundamentally his journey based itself on two legs – Satya and Dharma. I just want to highlight few points in Rama’s life where he has gone against the easier options to make sure Satya/Dharma are held upright.

1)      Episode of Viswamitra: -  Rama did not hesitate a second to follow Sage Viswamitra, just because his father asked him to do so. He did not complain that he is being asked to sleep on the rock/sand/mud floors as opposed to his usual routine of sleeping in well-made and well-maintained princely bed rooms. He did not hesitate a second to kill demon Thataki. He mentions to Viswamitra that because my father asked me to follow you and do anything you say, I am killing this demon. Period.

2)      Marriage with Sita:- As Rama broke the Holy bow of Lord Siva, it is evident that he is eligible to get married to Sita. King Janaka offered Sita to Rama, which is not easy to say no given beauty of Princess Sita. Rama showed immense maturity at that tender age by saying to King Janaka, that matter as significant as his marriage is a decision of his father and not his own.

3)      Episode of relinquishing throne:- This is a tough one. As the eldest son of the king Dasaradha, he would have known subconsciously that he is to become the king one day. Now when all of a sudden, his fortunes deceive him and he is asked not only to relinquish the throne but also asked to leave the kingdom to hardships of forest. Rama maintained his composure in that situation and followed the instructions of his father without any hue and cry. This is the defining moment of Ramayan.

4)      Episode of Bharata:- Bharata, the son of Kaika, gave an irresistible option to Rama to comeback to kingdom. Rama politely refused it stating that he cannot go back on his word. This situation he has successfully conquered the temptation of riches offered by Bharata by sticking to his path.

5)      Making Ravan as enemy:- Rama has shown his confidence by choosing to fight with Ravan. Ravan is a seasoned warrior and has an acclaim of defeated even the Gods, but that did not invoke any fear in Rama.

6)      Making Sugreeva as friend:- Rama is cognizant of the fact that Sugriva is himself in doldrums and if he chooses Vali as his friend his search of Sita would be easy. But he stood by Sugreeva and not by Vali as Vali is not in path of Dharma.

7)      Agnipravesh:- To me this is the toughest test Rama has faced in his life. Even today people find fault with Rama. I found one of the best interpretations in “Ramayana Kalpavriksham” by Telugu Poet Viswanatha Satyanarayana Garu. As per the poet, the test is not for Sita, it is a test for Rama himself. He is facing a challenge that is two-fold- one if he chooses to accept Sita without proving her purity, future generation might find fault with Sita. Secondly if he subjects her to the test, the future generation will admonish him. So he chose the option that will hold Sita upright at the risk he being ridiculed. Thus giving a chance for every tom, dick and harry to criticize him, who is a perfect individual all through his life. 

Memories

I still remember going over the pictures of my childhood over and over again while growing and then as an adult. I made sure to show them to my friends while in college. Then when I got married I have shown them to my wife. Then comes my daughter and I have shown them as well. In all there are at most 20 pictures of my childhood that are stored as memories. Obviously as it is only 20 pictures, people enthusiastically went over them every time I showed them.

Then there were two dozen pictures of us visiting Hampi and Warangal. As the camera reel is limited, my father made sure all the important aspects of architecture were covered and of course me and my sister got equal (or nearly equal) chance of getting into the picture. We stored them as sweet memories. Whenever I take a glance at the album, it brings me back the architecture of Vijayanagaram and Kakatiya empires in front of my eyes.

Now comes ubiquitous mobile cameras and other digital photography, combined with madness of social networking. We started capturing everything just for the heck of it. Sometimes in a rat race just to use the picture as an excuse to post in social network when we really have got nothing to say. Pictures which served as memories, stopped being so when we started capturing everything we do. 

We see a dozen pictures posted on social network of people eating out and the dishes they chose to eat. I cannot really understand why “eating” is a memory, for a person who eats 3 meals a day. I can understand if the person comes from country like Somalia where eating 3 meals a day a luxury.

We get hundreds of likes and comments from friends. I don’t want to sound sexist but the truth is fairer sex gets more likes. I see people uploading 100 pictures in one go and honestly I feel bored after looking at 4^th or 5^th pic. I seriously wonder if the persons who liked and commented on the album, have really taken all the time to see them or just responding as Social Network courtesy.

Then comes Selfies. Oh my God, I am not exaggerating if I say that there are people who take 100 selfies in a day. I wonder if selfies have taken away business from mirror manufacturers. While it is not a bad idea to record how I looked like at a specific point in time, I feel it is an overkill if we try to record how I looked like at every point in time. Result? May be Gigabytes and Petabytes of pictures produced every year and giving business to BigData technologies.

One other thing with selfies is people making faces while taking them. Twisted mouth, slanted face, funny expressions. My grandmother innocently asked if the person has a twisted mouth while looking at someone’s selfie.

But frankly, in this huge dump of pictures, if I really wanted to extract a specific memory how difficult it is going to be?  Technology made it easy to capture memories. However, with inappropriate usage of technology we are creating more junk and thus making it difficult to mine good memories from huge pile of data. 

Your freedom ends where my nose begins

I have come across this story in school. An interesting one and even more relevant today with everyone is free to do what they want, but very few understand the limits of such freedom. The story goes like this

London historically is a city with unpredictable rains. So people used to carry umbrella all the time while going out. There is one gentleman who is walking on the streets with his umbrella in hand. Lost in his thoughts, he starts casually waving his hand to and fro while taking small steps towards his destination. As he sped ahead, the waving of hand gains equal momentum and unfortunately the umbrella hits the nose of the other gentleman coming from behind. They both start an altercation.

First Gentleman: “What is your problem? It is my hand and my umbrella and I am free to wave it as per my wish”

Second Gentleman: “I have no contention about your freedom. However, you must note that your freedom ends where my nose begins”

Wonderful statement isn’t it?  We are free to do what we want so long as it does not hurt anyone directly or indirectly. Most of our actions are not executed in isolation. As social animals we are, our actions have an impact to others. It could be affecting someone in the family, friends, neighborhood, nation or the society in general. We must be cognizant of this and take utmost care that our actions do not lead to detrimental effect on others. 

Strategic Leadership

Leadership is an important function that is responsible for formulation, communication and execution of strategies in every organization, company or state.  In all these phases, the leader should connect to ground reality, assess the status quo, then drive the change and take feedback. Most organizations have leaders sitting at top making decisions that impact each staff but barely understand them, thus leading to badly devised strategies or good strategies that are executed bad.

Formulation:

Any leader who is not connected to the ground will be bound to fail in his strategy, as he would have designed something that may not fit the situation. We are in a complex business scenario where off the shelf strategies wont work well. Leadership trying to copy strategy from successful companies are doing at their peril.  In order to device and design  strategy a leader should have a profound understanding of the situation, strengths and weaknesses of the people and the competition among others.

Communication:

Success of any strategy depends on appropriate communication of actions required for the strategic outcome. Communication of the actions forms prime precursor to its execution. A well communicated strategic actions derive much more benefits as the ground staff understand and stand committed to the strategy.  Any strategic action enforced on the staff with out adequate communication, will inevitably lead to mixed outcomes due to lack of clarity on what is expected out of actions.

 Lead the change:

Change doesn't happen automatically, it needs to be lead. Hands-off leaders will suffer the surprise that change did not bring needed results. This is because they have given directions to subordinates and relax in their cabins hoping things to beget results. How ever, in absence of leadership, change will meet resistance and finally dies down before it shows impact.

Feedback :

One potential cause of failure is when the necessary feedback is not fed back to leadership team/leader on what is not working. This happens when the subordinates are scared to give any bad news to boss or when the ‘yes men’ of the boss always filter and moderate the feedback.  This will stop the much needed corrective action to make things work and thus lead to failure path. 

When Learning is Fun

My four year old daughter shot a dozen questions at us during weekend. Most questions relate to Hindi words she picked up during the week from her Hindi speaking classmates. When we gave her answer to each question, some glow is on her face signifying she is enjoying the learning act. I was very happy to see that, because learning is the motive behind education and it is awesome when some one enjoys learning new stuff. At that tender age every learning excites the kid. Problem is with grownups when they are exposed to learning. 

Problem1:

Organizations spend lot of time and efforts on training and development of their staff, how ever its success is miserably low and the impact the training brings to the day job of the staff is minimal. Also most times training are dictated either by central training department, senior management or the line management. This can sometimes lead to sending the wrong employee to wrong set of training. Employees lack commitment to training that they have not requested for and had to go just because of compulsion. 

As one ages, a feeling I-Know-it-all dominates few folks. They are face a not so receptive to new learning, discounting them as old wine in new bottle. Their prejudices disallow from enjoying as well as assimilating the learning.

Some folks are too scared of change. So instead of enjoying the new things , they become skeptical and most times resist change. This will prevent them from enjoying the new learning.

Problem2:

At tender age kids pick up many things by the way of questioning. There is no silly or simple question to their eyes and they can ask anything and everything. Grown ups struggle to ask questions at times, not because they do not have them but because of psychological barriers.

Lets say a person who is widely respected as super performer and brilliant person at workplace. He most times feels a pressure to suppress any simple question that's deemed understood by rest of the herd. If he doesn't people will think him not smart enough. Some people have fear of being ridiculed in public when a basic question is asked. Some folks have the’sheep’ mentality and does not want to ask any question to their boss, this is sometimes looked at as disobedience. Also politics at work place causes another barrier as most often ironically, people do not see the ‘what’part of a question and instead start making absurd guesses about’why’ is he asking this question.

Conclusion:

Learning is really so much fun, if its done in right spirit. The excitement  of knowing a new thing is the real motivating factor for the act. 

Where there is a ‘Will’, There is a way

Popular misconception that a ‘Will’ is typically prepared by dying old men in 70s/80s to document how their wealth is to be distributed among the kin. Another related misconception is that its only for the rich folks who have lots of money to be distributed.  On the contrary ‘will’ is the document that gives direction on how your assets and wealth is to be distributed, in the unfortunate event of death and is so applicable to all. I try to give a perspective to this

You definitely need one, if you have complicated family relationships:

Lets say a person A got married to B and they have children C & D. A gets divorced with B and remarries with E and their children are F & G. A gets divorced with E and starts living H and they have a kid I.  In the absence of a well documented and registered will, and an unfortunate event of A’s death, there is heavy chance of dispute arising. In the end the property left by A may not be distributed in the manner he would have wanted. So its important for people in complicated relationships to have a will and register it as well.  Registering the will can help in case anyone tries to contest the authenticity.

You are an accomplished individual in 50s and above:

A person who is in 50s and has some wealth accumulated through his lifetime of hard work. Even if he/she does not have complicated relationships and had kids from single marriage,  a will would help his lifetime of earnings to be distributed in an amicable manner between the sons/daughters.

You have a single spouse and single kid:

This looks like a straight forward case where there is no need for a will, isn’t it? Yes until you hear about cases in this world where the father’s money is taken all by the son/daughter and dead man’d widow is left to struggle for making a living. So an explicit will stating how the wealth needs to be shared between spouse and kids is going to help in getting into such situations.

You have a single spouse and no kids:

Come on, nothing can be more straight forward. Why does one need a will? Okay let me explain that  Will is a document containing complete document of the assets and wealth a person has. Lets say a person A deposits x amount of money in a bank account in the form of fixed deposits. Unless spouse is aware of this account, she would not be able to claim that amount. There are many unclaimed deposits lying with banks as the next of kin are not aware of the fact. Will can serve as document of reference for the loved ones left behind.  Also if one has noble thought of donating some of his fortune to charity, it needs to be documented in will so that its executed accordingly.

You have complicated financial transactions:

In a country like India, we complicate our lives by indulging in transactions for petty financial benefits.  So will becomes a necessity. I know a situation where an uncle of mine invested his grand mother’s money in his name, as he was eligible for better dividends. Up on his death, as this element was not documented, the money wen to his legal heir. A will could have helped. 

So I would conclude that ‘will’ is a document which makes sure your preference of allocation of your fortune is done justly in your absence. For people who are in youth as well this is a must and it can be changed periodically (once in few years) to reflect accurate state of affairs and preferences.