Success in a new job

This is the second in my series of articles related to the Career field that I have written for "Career Guide" Magazine.

The following steps are keys to boost your self-esteem and self-confidence in your professional pursuits.

1. Upgrade your own - professional self: If you are currently employed, seek ways to continuously grow yourself by enhancing your knowledge, skills, and abilities. Identify competency gaps and fill them by taking short-term certificate courses or professional training programmes. There are plenty of them available today here in India from global training institutes like Dale Carnegie, Franklin Covey, Middle Earth Consultants to name a few, and other educational institutions like NIIT, Hughes - DWGE. If you feel paucity for time, go for online learning mode that can be done from the comfort of your home or office with the aid of a Desktop PC & Internet Connection. The Internet is a very powerful medium for education. Identify mentors. Approach them. Do what they do, think the affirming thoughts they think, and feel what they feel.

2. Manage your emotions: Strive to create and manage those emotions that you desire – from being energized to being joyful, resourceful, confident, open, dynamic, bold, creative, innovative, and even wise. For example, visualize an event or a time in your life which captures that emotion you want to recreate easily like feeling confident. Concentrate on a specific scene in which you were confident and zoom in on what you were doing, how you were moving and talking, gesturing, laughing, and smiling. As you recapture those empowered feelings, you can feel confident any time you choose. Learning how to manage your emotions daily can play a significant role in your professional career & personal satisfaction in life. It can also contribute to your growth as a superior manager as you move up the hierarchy in your organization.

3. Change how you think about things: How you attach to things will significantly influence how you feel about them. If you view something that has happened to you as incredibly unfair, then you will feel victimized and unjust about it. But if you view it as a learning experience, you will see opportunity for significant gain. It is perfectly fine to make a mistake as long as there is a significantly learning derived out of it so as not to repeat it the next time around. The next time you are placed off better when faced with a similar scenario. Experiences can be powerful learning tools for growth in one’s own personal & professional life depending on how you welcome them and perceive them to be. Success is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience. Experience is often the result of bad judgment. Hence, we must keep at it. If we keep striving to make things better and we learn from our “mistakes”, then we will succeed.

4. Identify and focus on your desired outcome: Determine what you want and need in your life and your career in specific terms. Goals such as wanting a better job, more money, less hassles, reduced stress are too general. Specific goals enable you to focus on the outcome. Once finely focused, your goals mobilize into action. Pursue goals worthy of your efforts. Pursue goals that challenge you to be the best you can be and provide a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment when you achieve them. Set goals and determine outcomes. Make a map of the roads you want to travel in your life. Figure out where you want to go and how you are going to get there. Be specific. The more detailed you are, the more empowered you are to create a result.

5. Become committed to your success: The greater your commitment, the greater will be your resolve to let nothing stand in your way. The extent to which you are committed to your success is the extent to which you will achieve it. The key to success is to decide what’s most important to you and then take massive action each day to make it better, even when it doesn’t look as if it’s working. Be persistent in taking action: Every time you do something, you learn from it, and you find a way to do it better next time. No problem affects ones entire life, even though it may look like right now. Do not be shut down by fear of failure, follow the advice of the Nike Ad & Just do it.

6. Identify those individuals whom your function impacts and meet them: Get to know their needs, interests, and motivations. Learn about their roles and responsibilities. It is critical to your own success that you know what works for your colleagues.

7. Gain support and endorsement of others: Involve your superiors, peers and subordinates in your thoughts, feelings, ideas, and intentions by informing to them. If you ask for their input, most people are pleased to support you. Involvement fosters commitment.

8. Take care of the company and the company will take care of you: Bring to the job a sense of urgency about the task at hand. Your future will basically rest with your performance reputation established within the first few months on the job. Don’t be apolitical. Refuse to discuss personalities or to take sides.

9. Know the Business: Know more about your business and company than you need to know. Ask about new products or new projects or programs. Learn how the company operates and become known to as many people as you can.

10. Regularly review your own performance: Measure performance. Review monthly what you have done. Measure your performance against your own goals. Be tough on yourself. Expect results, not perfection.

11. Be alert and moving all the time: Keep things moving. Do not sit on yesterday’s successes. Everything that you do will have a direct positive or negative impact on the bottom line. Prudence dictates better performance.

Believe in yourself and deem yourself to be worthy, if you are committed to your success and trust your skills, you will find the strength and courage to go on.

My viewpoints on what makes an excellent workplace

The Cover Story was "GOOD PLACES TO WORK" in Business Manager Magazine. The following were my responses based on my experiences.

1. What are the ingredients for making excellent work place from employers as well as employess point of view?

My answer is that the employer must seek to attain & retain the best possible talent through various sources. There must regular upgradation of one's skills through Training & Developmental Activities. Employees look at the benefits that they are going to get in return for the amount of time they spend in Office. And mind you, it is not just Monetary Benefits. They look at the Workplace, its Culture, Atmosphere, Environment, Housekeeping, Reputation in the market, with the Customers, HR Policies, Career Growth Advancement, etc...

2. What is the role of HR in this process.

The HR must be highly competent, must have be able to make things happen, must be able to motivate people, must have rewards & recognition programmes in place, must encourage & appreciate people wherever due, salary benefits must match with the best in the market competition, employees must be regular appraised, there must be an internal HR Newsletter,

3. What are the impediments in making excellent work place?

The impediments could be people who are opposed to change, who are used to routine because change causes them stress to them, people who view investment on employees as an expense rather than a ROI.

My Viewpoints on Attrition in an Organization

These are some of my own viewpoints on the Issues of "Attrition in an organization" that was accepted & published in Business Manager Magazine

1) What do you identify as major reasons for attrition ?

Most of the times, it is the work culture & the environment. Money is also an important factor, but there are people who would like to be loyal to the company & are emotionally attached to their workplace. But if the work culture is not conducive or promotive, then the feeling of resentment creeps in, it is like within the family & thus people leave.

Another one of the reasons could be internal politics by senior members who do not want their juniors to grow. By creating stumbling blocks for the juniors, they make them want to leave & this way their objective of not letting the company grow is achieved. Seniors often do not want the juniors to grow. People also look at the benefits they are getting back from the company in lieu of the efforts put in by them. If that is found to be not satisfactory, then they leave. Unfriendly HR policies is also another reason like refusal of leave, salary - cutting for no logical reason delay in reimbursements, etc... I guess that that in today's scenario, the old adage of Boss - Worker concept is gone. People should no longer be treated as workers who are being paid for the work they do. Everyone wants to feel to be a part of the company, I am talking of ownership, Salary is something which one gets in return for the services rendered by the person to the organization. The labour concept is outdated today. Hence, if some company is still following that culture, then that could be another one of the reasons why people leave. People also leave for lack of career - growth opportunities.

Another reason could also be the the attitude of the top management towards not taking any action or showing some worry for the employee's leaving the organization. They only look at the top - line, they only look at how much money / business is coming in & hence till the time it is not affected, they feel that people may come & people may go, but i will go on forever. This is not valid in today's scenario. In such cases, also a person will leave where he feels that his contribution is not valued. People want to be felt as a part of the contributing team, one person alone must take all the credit.

2) What can be the possible strategies to combat attrition ?

I would highly recommend a strong HR Friendly Policies. Apart from that there should be regular increments of wages. It should be totally unbiased & based strongly on performance only. There must be rewards & recognition schemes to boost employee morale & productivity. Employees need to be kept motivated & engaged all the times. No work is impossible when the employee is motivated & highly enthusiastic. Internal HR Branding, that is of promoting the organization as an avenue for growth & reasons to stick around is another strategy that can be adopted.

3) Any HR practice you adopted in your organization which really helped you to reduce attrition rate?

The company has introduced Performance Linked Incentives Policies as a strategy to combat the high rate of attrition & to be able to retain employees from joining the competition. There is also a regular Performance Appraisal System in place with annual increments.

4) Any long term solution to increase stability of employee in the organization?

Employees must feel that they are a part of the company & the people must also grow alongwith the company, otherwise nobody will stick around.

How to put your career on the fast track

1. Choose the job or career with great care, attention & detail – The choice of a job or occupation for which you are ideally suited for comes over and above anything else. Choose it with great care, attention & detail. Do plenty of research on it. Speak to your friends, professors, do research over the internet, and take professional career guidance where necessary. Planning is a must. Otherwise, if you to try work at something that you do not enjoy or believe in, but took it up as it came your way, then you will neither be happy nor satisfied with it, both personally and professionally, and hence will never be successful. Choose the work carefully after thorough research & planning and if you don’t love what you are doing currently, get out of it! Working at something that you don’t care about is the best way to waste your time in life.

2. Become excellent at what you want to do – You have to pay any price, go any distance and spend as much amount of time necessary to be the best that you can be. Extraordinary results call for extraordinary performance and only those who are willing to strive towards that extra mile attain them. You must strive to increase your worth and value in order to earn more. Overall, you must be able to enjoy your work. Approach your work with zest and enthusiasm; observe what a difference it will make over a period of time.

3. Work at the right place and with the right boss – A ‘people’ organization is characterized by 3 things – commitment, teamwork & human touch. The right company is the one that respects its people and pays for its performance. The right company is dynamic, open to new ideas, provides a competitive and challenging atmosphere in the right spirit and is full of opportunities for people who are ambitious and want to grow in life.
   
   Much of your happiness and satisfaction in job will depend upon your relationship with the immediate superiors. If you cannot get along, then make every effort to resolve it at the earliest, if it is a big organization, get transferred to another department and if you still can’t do anything about it, just walk away.
   
   Enjoy working with people. Our co-workers are very important to us. Develop pleasant, congenial & fun-loving relationships.
   
   Choosing the right work, the right place and the right people to do it with is laying the foundation for career success.

4. Develop good work habits – Develop a reputation for quality work, speed and dependability and you will immediately stand out from the majority. These qualities are the benchmark in a person for promotion. This is also the fastest way to get noticed and bring yourself to the attention of the superior.
   
   Be straight with everyone. Don’t be dishonest or lie about something that was never meant to be. There are always many reasons or excuses to compromise. You may reason that people are not ready to hear the truth or bad news. It is these rationalizations that usually lead to unethical conduct and eventually backfire.
   
   
   Be dedicated to the end result, the output, not how you get to it or whose idea it is or whether it looks good or not. Respect the work of all those who respect their own work.

5. Keep learning – Become devoted to lifelong learning. The most successful and fulfilled people are those who think the best thoughts. We can only act on what we know. And when we know better, we can choose better. Subscribe to book libraries, book summaries, build your own collection, become a committed audio-tape user, Listen to these materials on way to work, make the best use of traveling time, Learn and continually expand one’s own mind and its vast potential.
   
   To earn more, one must learn more and thus keep on growing continuously. The outer world of results will always correspond to the inner world of preparation.

6. Cultivate good relationships with others – Holding constant for knowledge, skill, luck and intelligence, your success will be in direct proportion to the number of people known. The network of contacts and relationships developed with people over a period of time will work more for your own career than any other factor. Become a member of a professional organization. Get involved with community affairs. Network. Socialize. Build lifelong relationships & invaluable contacts.
   
   Eventually, it is they who will assist you when you are seeking a change or moving up the career path. They will also stand by you in periods of difficulty, when undergoing a period of career transition or job rotation. Knowledge & experience sharing in such moments is invaluable to help transit through without any hindrances.

7. Celebrate achievements – Celebrating small successes supplants the long – term drive towards reaching a major result. When one small step or goal is achieved, celebrate it. Train the mind to recognize success at each and every step achieved towards a major long – term goal.

Book Review on “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently” Authored by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

The Best Managers reject conventional wisdom. This book describes their perspective and how they keep talented employees. If you're a manager, if you work in human resources, or if your company hires managers and you are seeking criteria to hire great managers, you'll want to give "First, Break All The Rules: What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differently" by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman a read.

The Authors expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place."

The authors have culled their observations from more than 80,000 interviews conducted by Gallup during the past 25 years. Quoting leaders such as basketball coach Phil Jackson, Buckingham and Coffman outline "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager: Finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and selecting staff for talent--not just knowledge and skills. First, Break All the Rules offers specific techniques for helping people perform better on the job. Good managers spend more time with their best performers than with their less productive counterparts. They fit people into the right roles and hire for talent rather than experience, they focus on strength rather than weakness, and that they clearly define the right results as opposed to the right steps. Buckingham and Coffman also illustrate ways to promote and compensate people for honing their valuable talents instead of seeking new tasks that will take them up the company ladder.

"The point is to focus people toward performance," they write. "The manager is, and should be, totally responsible for this." This book tells you exactly how to improve as a supervisor. Good managers recognize employees as they are – as individuals. They do not treat everyone the same. They also don’t try to “fix” people and their weaknesses. Companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success. The focus is on managers who excel at turning talent into performance. A manager has to remember that he is on stage everyday. His people are watching him. Everything he does or says affects their performance.

After extensive research, Buckingham and Coffman summarize the twelve key factors in retaining star employees. If the employees can answer the below questions affirmatively, you probably have a strong and productive workplace:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?

2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?

5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?

9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

10. Do I have a best friend at work?

11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?

12. At work, have I had the opportunities to learn and grow

What about stock options, high pay, and other more obvious benefits? Don't employees want those also? Yes. However, Buckingham and Coffman point out that those benefits attract all people, including what they classify as ROAD warriors (Retired While On Active Leave or unproductive employees). The above twelve factors attract and keep productive employees.

So, can anyone become a great manager? According to the research of Buckingham and Coffman, probably not. They found that amongst the great managers, those who are effective catalysts for turning employee potential into production, the motto is "People don't change that much. Don't waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough."

Buckingham and Coffman found that the greatest managers make a clear distinction between knowledge, skills, and talent, where talent is defined as natural recurring patterns of thought within a person. While knowledge and skills can be taught, the greatest managers know that talent cannot be taught. A key of management success is finding the right kind of person for any given job.

Each person has a unique set of talents and a natural tendency to behave in a particular way making them unique. This set of talents defines who the person is and, more importantly, the kinds of work the person will enjoy.

What about the various self-help and self-improvement programs used by companies today? Buckingham and Coffman say that most great managers dismiss them as ineffective. You can't just teach employees "the nine habits of an effective life" and expect them to excel. Buckingham and Coffman explain that each individual's brain is uniquely wired. Performance is in the synapses, or the connections between a person's brain cells. This develops in early childhood.

When a child grows, many brain cells exist. There are relatively few connections between the cells. Certain pathways between various groups of brain cells will be strengthened as the child grows. Other pathways will rarely be used. These seldom used pathways and cells will be pruned by the brain.

The result? Some people will be great at strategic thinking. Others will struggle with strategic thinking. Some people will have a talent for mathematics. Others won't. Some people will be naturally empathetic and verbally fluent. Not so for others. Trying to make someone function in an area his or her brain hasn't developed will lead to stress, low satisfaction, and, probably, on-the-job failure. But, putting someone in a role where he/she is naturally wired will probably lead to satisfaction and competency.

What about simple roles that "anyone should be able to do." Roles people are in only because they need a job and hope to leave as soon as possible? This is a flaw in manager thinking. Disparaging any role within an organization is wrong. Rather, great managers recognize greatness and excellence in any role, even if it is usually considered a common job. Some people will have the talent to do that job while others won't.

Buckingham and Coffman criticize the conventional career path of promoting people out of roles in which they excel and moving them into roles in which they struggle. The authors say it is foolish to reward excellence in a role by removing the person from the role. For example, not everyone has the talent or the desire to be a manager. The talent to be a great computer programmer will not be the same talent needed to be a systems analyst or project manager.

"First, Break All The Rules" gives solid advice about finding people suited to a given role and, then, managing them effectively. This applies to all roles, including management. Are you a potentially great manager? Do you have the talent and recurring patterns of thought to manage others effectively? Do you feel respect and trust must be earned by your employees?

Great managers and average managers answer this question differently. Don't feel bad if you get the answers "wrong" and answer differently from the greatest managers.

Conclusion:

The most important advice: develop strengths, don't try to fix weaknesses. Some people will never improve in their weak areas, but can accomplish the world with their strengths. Learn to recognize and develop those strengths, and you will be managing a team that can do anything.

Book Summary on The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey

This priceless book is one of the best Management books that I have come across dealing with the subject of Organizational Staff’s Time Management. If you are someone who feels overwhelmed with the problems created by other people, reading this book and applying the lessons learned from it can change your life. It definitely did to mine. It preaches to the discerning reader an unforgettable lesson; how to save time to do what you want & need to do. Step by step the authors of this book using examples & story-telling show how the managers can free themselves from doing everyone else’s job and ensure that every problem is handled by the proper person. By using the 4 – rules of Monkey Management, managers of today will learn to become effective supervisors of time, energy and their own talent.

The book begins by telling a story about a harried monkey manager who worked for long, hard hours, yet never quite seemed to get caught up with all the work he had to do. He then learned about monkey management and how not to take initiative away from his people so they can care for and feed their own “monkeys.” In this process, he learned to be more effective in dealing with his own manager and the demands of his organization. The performance of his department drastically improved as did the prospects for his career.

In the good old days, when one became a manager things were a lot easier because one’s own performance depended strictly on one’s own efforts. In those days, the longer and harder one worked, the more work one got done. However, in today’s age, the formula works in reverse. Typically all that the managers these days do are to shuffle between papers without ever making progress on the real work that needs to be done. This is defined as triumph of technique over purpose; one is doing more but accomplishing less. How Paradox this is! There is just no time left to implement the ideas for improving operations, to do planning, coordinating, staffing, and other key managerial tasks that will keep the unit functioning well towards the future. And then attempts to address these key issues by working overtime, on weekends, attending seminars, hiring outside help address merely the symptoms of the problem, not the cause itself. It is like taking an aspirin to reduce the fever but ignoring the illness that caused the fever. As a result, the problem gets progressively worse.

In this book, A Monkey is defined as “the next move.” Typically a manager’s subordinate will have a problem. Whilst he is explaining it to him, the monkey is on his back. When they both are talking, the matter is under joint consideration i.e. the monkey had one leg on each of their backs. When the manager says that he needs time to think over a possible solution to the problem the monkey has moved his leg from the subordinate’s back onto the manager’s back and the subordinate walks away 10 kilos lighter. In this manner the manager assumes the worker role & vice-versa. For every monkey there are two parties involved: one to work for it and one to supervise it.

When the manager picks up the monkeys that his people could have handled, he gives the message that he wants the monkeys. So naturally, the more he picks up, the more he gets. And so on a normal workday, he has as many as he can handle apart from the regular requirements of the job like reporting to his Boss and others. This way the monkeys keep coming & multiplying to a point where he has to borrow time from his personal life: exercise, hobbies, and eventually the family. And then the manager starts to procrastinate whilst the staff waits. This is referred as a costly duplication of effort. By spending all his time working on other people’s monkeys means that the manager has no opportunity to work on his own. He is not managing. He is being managed. He is not proactive, but strictly reactive. He is merely coping.

The manager is recommended to attend to a seminar titled “Managing Management Time” which helps him to learn the golden principle “Things not worth doing are not worth doing well.” & “The more you get rid of your people’s monkeys, the more time you have for your people”. As a manager, to the extent that one can get people to care for and feed their own monkeys, they are really managing the work themselves.

This is illustrated in the book by the Oncken’s 4 Rules of Monkey Management. The dialogue between a boss and one of his or her people must not end until all monkeys have:

Rule 1. Appropriate “next moves” identified and specified.

Rule 2. Owners: The monkey is assigned to a person i.e. who is responsible for it, ownership. This must begin from the lowest organizational level consistent with their welfare.

Rule 3. Insurance Policies: The risk is covered. Every Monkey leaving the presence of the Manager on the back of one of his people must be “recommended & acted upon” or “acted & then advised upon.”

Rule 4. Monkey feeding and checkup appointments: The time and place for follow-up is specified. Proper follow-up means healthier monkeys. Every monkey should have a checkup appointment.

The author states an example of these 4 rules by way of a dialogue between a manager and a subordinate. The manager explains to his subordinate, “We do not have a problem, and we will never again have one. I am sure that there is a problem, but it is not ours, it is either yours or mine. The first item on the agenda is to neaten up the pronouns and find out whose problem this is. If it turns out to be my problem, I hope you will help me with it. If it turns out to be your problem, I will help you with it subject to the following condition: at no time while I am helping you with your problem will your problem become my problem, because the minute your problem becomes my problem, you will no longer have a problem and I can’t help a person who does not have a problem!”

The purpose of the rules of monkey management is to help ensure that the right things get done the right way at the right time by the right people. On a precautionary note, the author also states the rules of Monkey Management should be applied only to monkeys that deserve to live. Some do not. He urges to ask the question: “why are we doing this?” If there is no viable answer, shoot the monkey so that the next time one will not be doing more efficiently things that should not have been done in the first place. The monkey is not a project or a problem; the monkey is whatever the ‘next move’ is on a project or a problem.

In order to ensure that the problem does not occur repeatedly i.e. a permanent cure the author recommends:

· Delegation – whereby the people are achieving more and more with less and less involvement from the manager. Whilst assigning involves a single monkey; delegation involves a family of monkeys. And once delegation is reached, staying there is easy compared with the job of getting there.

· Practice Hands-Off Management as much as possible and Hands-On Management as much as necessary. People are fully responsible for their projects unless a problem is encountered that requires intervention. This practice leads to self-management, which is a lot better than the high degree of boss-management that one experience’s while assigning monkeys. The assignments should be boss-initiated only to the extent that the staff member cannot initiate them.

· It is better to strike a straight blow with a crooked stick rather than spend the whole life trying to straighten the darn thing out.

What are the learning’s that one derives at the end of reading this book? That one must be able to clearly measure success by what one is able to get the people to do, not by what one does by oneself. In order to do that, the mentality has to change from that of a do-er to that of a manager. Learn to replace the psychological rewards of doing with the rewards of managing, namely, deriving satisfaction from what the people do and being recognized, paid, and promoted accordingly.

In the past, one spent much of the time fighting fires; now most of them can be prevented by spending just a little time in advance. In the past, a great deal of one’s time is spent in reacting to other people; now it can be spent a great deal in proactive measures. These include doing some advance planning for a change so as to enable to do the right things the right way the first time instead of having to do them over so often.

Perhaps the greatest lesson learnt about monkey management, at work and at home, is that there are always more monkeys clamoring for attention than the time one has to manage them. Hence unless one is extremely careful about which to accept responsibility for, it is very easy to wind up caring for the wrong monkeys while the really important ones are starving for lack of attention. If we thoughtlessly try to handle all of them, our efforts will be diluted to the point where none of them are healthy.

Review of Chapter 4 from Stephen R Covey's book The 8th Habit : From Effectiveness to Greatness

The essence of The 8^th Habit is to find your inner voice and inspire others to find theirs. So many people have not yet found their voice, lost their voice or yet not have had the conviction to sound their voice. And hence, the 8^th Habit is all about finding your inner voice & express your inner feelings, your burning desires, what is it that you want to be, but cannot be & it tells to us as to how to go about achieving it. We are a product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, that space will become larger. Little children and people who are mentally handicapped may not have the space, but the overwhelming majority of adults do. Determinism is deeply imbedded into present – day culture and is reinforced by the terrifying sense that if I do have a choice, then I am also responsible for my present situation. Until a person can honestly say “I am what I am” and “I am where I am because I so choose to be there”, that person cannot say with conviction, “I choose otherwise”. Examples of typical voices are “I am not appreciated or valued, I am bored, No matter how hard I work, I feel something is missing.”

The above are typical voices that people express openly or are in their heart. All of us possess more intelligence, more talent, more capability, more creativity, more resources than what our present jobs allow us to do and we are always under tremendous pressure to produce more for less in our jobs. These two things represent loss of voice. Also, add to the fact, that 50% of our time we spend doing things that are urgent but not really important. We do things that are pressing, popular, they are approximate, they are pleasant, but they are not really important. Most of the times people do not have a clear sense of what importance is because they are not really on the same page. And then finally, urgency will replace the important like reports, emails, meetings, etc…And this is typical in most organizations.

Half of the time is spent on things that are urgent but not important and voices are being lost. Offices are full of politics hissing up the hierarchy. Due to this, the capacity to produce is being straight jacketed out of people.The 8^th Habit is based on a very simple paradigm – A Whole Person. The Whole Person consists of Body, Mind, Heart & Spirit. When there is unity, harmony & understanding between them, you have voice.

Examples of the application of the idea of Voice to One’s self: - Mind - What is it that you are good at, what are your talents, what are your competencies, what are your gifts? Heart - Passion, What is it that excites you, what do you love doing, what will get your engine up & running so that you will not have other people psyche you up or motivate you ? Body - Needs, Physical needs to survive in this world, goods & services to meet these needs, economic needs. Spirit - Conscience what do you think you should do, what is it that your conscience drives you to do?

Summarizing the examples, we are relating TALENT for the MIND, PASSION for the HEART, NEED for the BODY that you are trying to serve, CONSCIENCE for the SPIRIT. Voice is applying this simple map to one’s self.

If one were to apply the concept of Voice to an Organization; What is its Core Competency or What is the Collective Mind, What about the Collective Heart of the Organization, is the Passion there, what Need is being served, what Services or Products are being given to meet Human Needs: Spirit is the High – Trust Culture; do they live with Principles & Integrity so that it merits the commitment of the people in their life. Does it have a Sense of Meaning that turns People on that they are really adding value?

If one were to apply the concept of voice to Family; Even a family has its own economic needs, hopefully everyone is on the same page, they have one mind, one heart – they are excited about it and also they will try to live by Principle’s so that there is high trust and open authentic communication.

Because these 4 dimensions of life obviously overlap, you really can’t work exclusively on any one without touching directly or indirectly on the others. Developing and using these 4 capacities or intelligences will instill within one’s self quiet confidence, internal strength and security, the ability to be simultaneously courageous and considerate, and personal moral authority. One must develop and work on all these 4 capacities or intelligences in order to take any one of them to its mature & sustainable level. This is what integrity means. It means the whole of our life in integrated around principles. Our capacity for production and enjoyment is a function, in the last analysis, of our character, our integrity. This takes constant effort to develop the physical muscle fiber, the emotional / social muscle fiber by getting us out of our comfort zones and doing those exercises that cause the fiber to break (pain); then it is repaired and enlarged and strengthened after a proper period of rest and relaxation.

In many ways, one’s efforts to develop these intelligences will profoundly impact the ability to influence others and inspire them to find their inner voice.