Sock `em with Psych! - Mind games for Managing!

AN MBA or a PGDBA teaches you a whole lot about the fundamentals of management but it does not often prepare you for the most important of all resources you will have in your quiver - People! Your success or lack of it in the mind-delving required will either boost your career or allow it to avalanche into the valley of gloom. What you need is a reorientation into the hows to get to the top of the heap!

Psycho-GroupingMost HR professionals will remember their fundamentals in group dynamics. However, when a new recruit comes in, it is not easy to recognise what's happening.

The Forming Stage: When teams come together, no one knows each other, trust is minimal, and very few really feel wanted or participatory

The Storming Stage: People get to know the foibles and failures (as compared to themselves) of the others in a team and the fireworks of fraternisation begin! This is a good time to concentrate on the work at hand than on personalities!

The `Norming' Stage: There is the beginning of a team feeling and togetherness, an excellent time to allocate responsibilities so that work procedures are laid down to everybody's satisfaction

The Performing Stage: The members of the group begin to work like a well-oiled machine, leveraging each one's strength against their weaknesses. Groups that keep this stage going for the longest time will succeed beyond belief! It will be the responsibility of the leader to keep his team at this stage for as long as possible as his success will hinge on it!

The Adjourning Stage: If the team is extraordinary, it is inevitable that everyone will grow in stature and the confines of the team will be felt. Members will start looking at fresh avenues of growth and may even be enticed by external factors to depart.

There will be regrets, recriminations perhaps and certainly a degree of dependency. The remaining members may also begin to look elsewhere unless a road map is drawn for them to go on

Psycho-skating!You will come across people that you have to work with even though you are as different as chalk and cheese. You cannot get by taking the view that you can avoid them, because you can't! Different jobs require different people and if you can't remember that, your work that needs a different input won't work either! You sure can do something about it.

Don't be reactive, be proactive! If you blow up when your fur is brushed the wrong way, nothing will get done. Watch you attitude!

Remember the power of positive thought and action. Your gung-ho spirit will out trump his failure-focus! Problems are solved with solutions not with blame!

Psychometry

There are a whole lot of tests available online or offline. People love doing tests that reveal more about themselves and are generally honest about their responses. Offer to do these tests for your colleagues (90% will agree) and see if you can work out a way to work better with them! Find out ways you can best get along with each other! The DISC profiling test is the fastest, most efficient test that be taken offline (its available online too!) and it will reveal how best you can get on together!

Psycho-CommHow do you come across? Do people understand what you say to them or do their faces take on a strained expression while you hold forth?

Perhaps you could do with a little refresher course in communication! Common boo-boos in communication include:

Beating consistently around the bush instead of getting down to the important point

Prevarication and evasive speech

Trying to sugar-coat bitter pills to the extent that the patient thinks that the pill is sugar and it does not have the desired effect

Expecting people to know what's on your mind when you yourself can't articulate it clearly to yourself!

Not listening to yourself!

Psycho-politik

One thing you can never avoid is the undercurrent that thrums through the floorboards of the office! Some call it politics, others call it a headache, but there's no getting away from it, it looms above, under and all around the atmosphere of the office. No two people are just the same. Therefore, systems and procedures notwithstanding, people have to be handled differently if you are to get equal productivity from them.

By not keeping your eyes open to what's happening in the dynamics of the office environment, you'll never be able to get things done to your best advantage. Your aim? Being a happy worker. If you don't keep up to what's going on, you will never be happy!

Working together is all about loyalty, trust and building relationships. If you don't take note of what people do, why they do it and how they do it, you won't make the relationships you need to succeed.

Even your own position in the office is untenable if your boss doesn't trust you and he won't if you don't demonstrate that you are a team player, ready to trust and be trusted!

Remember it is important to be wary of egos, motives and agendas, and if you can balance the lot against your own strengths, you will be the success you want to be!

S.Ramanujacharya

professor1@sify.com