4 strategies to #StayFocused If You’re Assigned to Multiple Projects Simultaneously

Most of us are juggling multiple projects with different teams at the same time. Switching attention between tasks takes time and saps focus and energy. Moving between teams, mostly requires you to adjust to different roles — you might be the boss on one but a junior member of another; each team has its own unique cultures which requires energy to handle.

How can you #managetime, stress & productivity if you’re on multiple teams?

1. Get the big picture. This will help#prioritize instead of using an ad-hoc approach. Most of us approach our work 1 day at a time instead of taking stock of the multiple projects that require our attention.

2. Sequence strategically:Pick one task and focus on it intensely, rather than juggling. Start with the task that requires the greatest concentration and give it your undivided attention.#Discipline here is critical.

 3. Protect yourself:When you’re focused on a high-priority task, block off unnecessary intrusions. You should only be disturbed if there is an emergency

4. Document &communicate progress: Keep #stakeholders informed of progress & #conflictinpriorities, if any. This builds trust & confidence

Last month, at Shradha HRD, we were designing a learning intervention for managers. One component of the module was the skills and behaviors that emotionally intelligent people display. We came across this question during our research.

There is an external vocabulary that can help you describe “the world well”. Then there is an vocabulary that can describe your emotions well. The difference is striking, even though we are speaking about vocabulary in both cases.

While interacting with teenagers, most experiences are “awesome”. A McDonalds burgers, a Professor, a movie and even a trip to the moon would all be categorized as “simply awesome”. The challenge here lies in our inability to correctly label our emotions while going through different life experiences. Emotional intelligence above all is the ability to be in touch with your own emotions. Are you happy, overjoyed or ecstatic. Moved, profoundly impacted or going through a life changing experience.

Building awareness around our own emotions helps us deal with our emotions better. Including anger, pain, depression and despondency !!!!

There is a little bagful of words that we carry around all the time, the one we often refer to as our Vocabulary. We replenish our wardrobes often, throwing out old shirts and dresses that no longer fit and add fresher ones that define us better with each growing year. But that little bag of words remains unchanged.  Years go by and we often hear ourselves saying the same words… “Oh that makes me so mad” “I feel bad” “I am so angry”… especially with our feelings, we tend to use very few and generic words to express how we feel.

While all of us experience a wide array of emotions, only a select few can accurately identify them and use the right words to express them. This capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them is what is known as emotional Intelligence. Research shows that only 36 % of people have the words to do this.  Without the insights into exactly what we are feeling and without the right words to express them, we are binging on many problems. Unlabeled emotions often go misunderstood, which leads to irrational choices and counterproductive actions.

While many might describe themselves as simply feeling “bad,” emotionally intelligent people can pinpoint whether they feel “irritable,” “frustrated,” “disappointed” or “anxious.” The more specific your word choice, the better insight you have into exactly how you are feeling, what caused it and what you should do about it.Like the anecdotal angry career women profiled in the #shradhahrdblog#, Recognizing and identifying emotions is a prerequisite for developing emotional intelligence.

So growing our kitty of words, with feeling words and self awareness is just one of the five things we can do to be more emotionally Intelligent at the workplace. According to David Goleman there are 4 more- self regulation, intrinsic motivation,Empathy and Social Skills.  Developing these skills improves our Emotional quotient which plays a vital role in many everyday decisions we make at the work place, such as how  we deal with pressure,  decisions on promoting, hiring and firing employees and dealing with conflict and change.

Pack then a bag of feeling words and get on the long but rewarding journey of emotional intelligence.  It is a journey with 5 flagship places (as listed by David Goleman ) to visit. Strew with events and eventualities,you may find yourself trudging slowing, one word or thought at a time, but a journey that rewards with  better mental health, well being and career success.

I read an interview with Bill Gates published in the Times of India. 3 points stayed with me:

1. The importance of emotional intelligence for people in Leadership

2. People management skills are not correlated with Scientific IQ & may be negatively correlated

3. It is rare to find someone who combines Scientific skills with IQ

An excerpt:

TOI: Sometime ago, you gave a speech about how you once “overvalued intelligence”. Can you elaborate?

 BG:There’s a certain type of IQ where I can give you a 500-page book on meteorology and you read it and you understand how tornadoes work. I always admired people who were good at that, and I thought if you were good at that, then everything else is easy.

Managing people? Just use common sense. Understanding profit & loss? That’s just a little mathematical equation. “You’re a smart person. You know physics. Go manage this group.” I used to think. I was wrong about that.

The idea that some of these skills were not correlated with scientific IQ, in fact, some of them were negatively correlated, it took me a while to figure that out. Those who combine scientific IQ with people skills—like Satya –are rare. You have to learn to build a team with different capabilities & as Microsoft got bigger, it became more important.

#Selfawareness is the first step to emotionally intelligent behavior.

How self-aware are you?

Do you use the same words to describe your #emotions, most times?

If you have had a#difficultconversation, would you describe your current state of mind as “being upset”?

My teenage daughter uses the same word -“upset”, to describe several emotions. Angry, disappointed, frustrated and fearful would all be categorized as “I’m upset”.

We now sit together and delve further to discover what “upset”really means. We are now making some progress, where she has begun a journey to become more aware of her emotions& label them more accurately

This capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them is what is known as #emotionalIntelligence. Research shows that only 36 % of people have the words to do this.

Research has also shown, the first step to dealing with emotions is to accurately identify them.

Step out of your skin & reflect on what you are feeling. If can view your emotions during a heated conversation and say “aaah…I can feel myself getting angry again”, it will immediately calm you down. It takes a little introspection and practice but gets better with time.

Try it..it really works!!!

98% of 6-year olds have Creativity scores at genius levels &only 12% of 15 year olds

In 1968, George Land (with Beth Jarman) conducted a research study to test the creativity of 1,600 children ranging in ages from three-to-five years old. This was the same creativity test he devised for NASA to help select innovative engineers and scientists.

The proportion of people who scored at the “Genius Level”

1. amongst 5 year olds: 98%

2. amongst 10 year olds: 30%

3. amongst 15 year olds: 12%

4. Same test given to 280,000 adults (average age of 31): 2%

According to Land, the primary reason for this is, there are 2 types of thinking processes when it comes to creativity:

Convergent thinking: where you judge ideas, criticise them and improve them, all of which happens in your conscious thought

Divergent thinking: where you imagine new ideas, original ones which are different from what has come, which often happens subconsciously

We teach children to try and use both kinds of thinking at the same time, which is impossible.
Competing neurons in the brain will be fighting each other, and it is as if your mind is having a shouting match with itself.

Land suggests we need to allow people to split their thinking processes into the various different states, to make each of them more effective.

If you want people to retain their ability and desire to be creative, encourage them to let their mind run free while they come up with ideas, and only afterwards to sit down, evaluate them and start working on the ones they think are the best.

How do you encourage creativity within your teams?

Cultural intelligence is an outsider’s seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person’s compatriots would.

Why does increasing your cultural quotient makes good business sense?

Most people who don’t really interact with clients outside India, believe increasing their cultural quotient is not important.

Research shows that we have a definite bias, conscious or unconscious towards people that are like us viz race, color, skin, values, traditions, age etc. This is well documented in the work done by Harvard Professors:

People with a common nationality or people from the same region tend to gravitate towards each other. Anyone that has lived or studied abroad will vouch for this. We see this phenomenon at the work place all the time: a shared cultural/regional heritage is usually a reason for immediate bonding.

Every home, every organization and every country has a distinct “culture”. If a person is more comfortable interacting with like minded people ie people with a similar age & education profile, socio-economic background and those that hold matching views, they find it difficult to work in a diverse e

If you see merit in embracing diversity and improving your cultural quotient, there are 3 simple strategies that will help:

1. Embrace diversity; not just tolerate it:Step out of your comfort zone & learn about other cultures. Travel to off-beat locations, talk with people that are different from you, make an effort to know those you have little in common with

2. Appreciate the reasons behind the customs and traditions. To outsiders, some customs and ways of functioning may seem odd because they see what is happening on the surface. They don’t know the reasons behind the tradition. Once you develop an

3. Suspend judgement: Become aware of differences&appreciate them. When we see life through our mind lens, we often look down on things that are different from the way we work.. We pass judgement and like or dislike things.

4. Be sensitive to the customs and traditions. Mirror them through your actions

Is consumption really an accurate measure of development or happiness?

The world over Growth & Development is measured by GDP, which is defined as the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods & services produced within a country’s borders in a year.

Roughly translated: the more we consume as a society, the more developed we are & corollary the happier we should be.

Bhutan has a different measure for Development: Gross National Happiness (GNH).

The 4 pillars of GNH are good governance, sustainable development, preservation & promotion of culture & environmental conservation.

Are the Bhutanese happier than the rest of the world? Is the Index a Political gimmick? This is debatable.

What is important is, there is the thought of moving away from “material consumption” as a measure of development. Economic development is critical but is it the only indicator of development?

Happiness is a function of how satisfied I am with what I have, not how much I consume.

If I look at how much I have, instead of how much I should have, it will definitely lead to happiness, everything else remaining the same, ceteris paribus.

The CEO of an infrastructure management company headquartered in the US had an interesting observation to make about his company culture. During a recent conversation with me, he said“2/3rd of our workforce is extremely conscious of hierarchy. They won’t question or voice opinions in front of seniors. The other one third is fairly egalitarian in their views. They stand up for their beliefs & question when required. This situation creates a disconnect within the organization”

What determines if a team member will blend into different cultures easily? 3 simple questions will determine the answer

1. Is the person motivated to learn about other cultures? Does he/she have a diverse circle?

2. Is the person able to suspend judgement while viewing differences in culture or is the person more comfortable with like-minded people?

3. Does the person mirror through actions the values &customs around them?

If the answer to these questions is “yes”, this person will find it fairly easy to blend into different cultures.

What are some steps you have taken to enhance your culture quotient?

I wish for the touch & feel of a live meeting with colleagues but was really impressed with the results from a virtual quarterly meet up of a Logistics company

I recently had a conversation with a C-suite executive from this company. He spoke about the tools they used for a recent meeting & how much they were able to achieve in a short period

Agenda: to decide new services to be added, address issues the company faced due to the Pandemic

1. Break out rooms to brainstorm: Each group was asked to come up with their ideas on how new services could be added to the current ecosystem

2. White board for ranking: All the ideas were plotted on a cost and potential benefit matrix. The combined group debated on where to place each idea on the grid. This helped narrow down the choice to 5 ideas

3. Polls for getting opinions: Instead of guessing what colleagues thought about the existing ideas, a poll was conducted to see where the majority opinion was

Within 2 hours the entire process of generating new idea, ranking them & getting final opinion on most suitable ideas was wrapped up.

I’m all for the human element but was impressed with the results accomplished in such a short span of time.

I came across this remarkable story of the turnaround of Denmark’s biggest energy company. They moved from Black to Green energy,during a crisis&are one of Europe’s most valuable energy companies.

In 2012, Danish Oil & Natural Gas, slid into financial crisis as the price of natural gas plunged by 90%. The board hired Henrik Poulsen, as the new CEO. Some leaders would go into a crisis-management mode, lay off workers till prices recover, Poulsen recognized the moment as an opportunity for fundamental change.

“We saw the need to build an entirely new company,” says Poulsen. He renamed the firm Ørsted. “It had to be a radical transformation; we needed to build a new core business & find new areas of sustainable growth. We looked at the shift to combat climate change& we became one of the few companies to wholeheartedly make this profound decision, to be one of the first to go from black to green energy.”

Today, Ørsted is the leader in offshore wind power.The transformation has propelled the company’s market value to US$30 billion.

The lesson for me is: it is possible to serve both interests of shareholders &society; you just need to have the vision &the determination to see it through

What are your lessons?

40 Years of Stanford Research Found That People with This One Quality Are More Likely to Succeed

In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel conducted the Marshmallow Experiment. It went like this.

Children (aged 4-9) were left in a room with 1 Marshmallow. The researcher said, if they waited 15 minutes, they would receive 2 Marshmallows. The researcher left the children alone in the room for 15 minutes.

Some children waited for 15 minutes to receive the 2 Marshmallows, some did not.

The interesting part of the study came several years later, when these children grew up as adults. The researchers conducted follow up studies for over 40 years and tracked each child’s progress in a number of areas.

The results showed that the children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having

1. higher academic scores,

2. lower levels of substance abuse,

3. lesser marriages ending in divorce,

4. better responses to stress,

5. more job stability and higher career trajectories

6. generally better scores in a range of other life measures.

Resilience is defined by the ability to remain patient, stay the course & continue working, even when the going is tough.

Important question to ask ourselves:

1. Are we able to resist the first Marshmallow and reap the rewards of delayed gratification?

2. Do we have the patience to stay the course for the grand prize?

3. Are we resilient to the pressures of instant gratification that will often tempt us?

I recently came across this story of a final year student B. Sc. Student from Bangalore that took her final exams, a day after she gave birth to a baby boy.

Giving birth is one of the most painful, joyful, challenging, life changing experiences that a woman goes though. For most of us, just surviving the first week is an achievement.

After reading this article, I marvelled at the determination and the sheer grit of the 20 year old that did this.

As the gritty girl sat to write her examination, her mother and new born infant were housed in the next room. She got up every 30 minutes, accompanied by an attendant to feed the baby.

To me, it was a story about “How I can do it?” as opposed to “How difficult it is?”. Often I have seen, when we decide to DO something, larger than ourselves, in pursuit of an inspiring goal, the entire eco-system comes out in support

What was heartening to see was the support she received from the college & her family.

It’s the story of exemplary willpower and unwavering support that her family and the college authorities gave, to keep alive the dreams of this extraordinary woman.

Read on…

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/she-wrote-exam-a-day-after-delivering-baby/articleshow/72407448.cms

When the chips are down, teams look towards their leaders for direction. How a leader responds determines the future of the organization and its defining culture.

I saw Mission Mangal recently & realized the opening scene is modelled around a famous incident that took place when Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was faced with the SLV-3 failure.

Prof. Satish Dhawan took upon himself the failure of theSLV-3 Mission at a public Press conference. A year later, after a successful launch heattributed the success of the subsequent Mission to his team.

Dr Kalam said “I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organisation owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience,”

To my mind, this is a brilliant example of leading from the front and of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership at work.

This incident had a huge impact on Dr. Kalam’s mind and shaped his persona as a leader. He referred to this incident several times during his Presidency and subsequently too.

This is a favourite anecdote at Shradha HRD. One we quote quite often during our programs on Emotional Intelligence for Leaders. It is rare to have a leader that is secure enough to give credit to the team for successes and accept responsibility for failures himself.

https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/chandrayaan-2-landing-how-abdul-kalam-dealt-with-the-failure-of-isro-first-satellite-launch-slv-3-in-1979-1596787-2019-09-08

Are you convinced that Work From Home is really the way forward?

Is this a sustainable, permanent solution for the future?

Most friends and colleagues that I have recently spoken to, are really looking forward to coming back to the office. The novelty of working from home seems to have worn off. Colleagues cite several reasons for wanting to come back to work:

1. They miss the connect of being with people

2. Coordination, especially across locations often becomes a challenge

3. Technology glitches often end up wasting valuable time

4. Training new members that join the team is particularly difficult

Most CEOs across the world feel that permanent work from home is not a sustainable option for the future.

However, there have been some valuable lessons from the Work From Home experience:

1. Minimum outages due to extraneous reasons: when there are contingencies like bad weather, lockdowns, shutdowns etc, it is now possible to continue business as usual

2. Measuring productivity of WFH possible: after the lockdown, there is a clear system in place to track output. This makes it easier for companies to be more flexible with Work From Home if someone is sick with a cold, needs to just be at home

3. Limited Work From Home to promote Gender inclusion: For most Indian companies a 4 day work week at office would have been unthinkable. The lockdown has shown staggered working is possible & productive. For working mothers, this could be a tremendous retention tool

This article gives the pros and the cons of Work From Home.

Read on…

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2020/05/07/ceos-want-employees-in-the-office.html

A story to inspire you to just HANG ON…

Organic Chemistry was not on top of my list of favourite subjects at school but there was 1 experiment I loved doing in the lab…The Titration experiment.

I loved guessing which drop is going to turn the mixture pink. It was fascinating!

Reading the much read story about Kentucky Fried Chicken reminded me of this experiment

At 65, Colonel Sanders was broke, lived in a tiny house &lived off of $99 social security checks. He decided things had to change &thought about what he had to offer. His friends raved about his chicken recipe.

He left Kentucky and travelled to different states to try to sell his recipe. He told restaurant owners that he had a mouth-watering chicken recipe. He offered the recipe to them for free, just asking for a small percentage on the items sold.

He heard NO over 1000 times but didn’t give up. He believed his chicken recipe was something special. He got rejected 1009 times before he heard his first yes.

With that one success Colonel Hartland Sanders changed the way Americans eat chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken, popularly known as KFC, was born.

What I find fascinating about this story is..

1. At 65, most people think about retirement. Colonel Sanders decided to challenge himself & make it count.

2. Most of us would have given up long before we reached a 1009 rejections but he persevered on

For all of us that are struggling at this time… you never know, which drop is going to turn the tide in your favour, which chance meeting, which interview…HANG ON

In an attempt to overcome gender-biased hiring, a vast majority of symphony orchestras in the US revised their hiring practices from the 1950s. Many orchestras opened up their hiring process to a range of candidates, rather than only hiring musicians who were handpicked by the conductor.

A number of orchestras adopted “blind” auditions whereby screens are used to conceal the identity and gender of the musician from the jury. In the years after these changes were instituted, the percent of female musicians in the five highest-ranked orchestras in the nation increased from 6 percent in 1970 to 21 percent in 1993.

Gender biases in hiring continue even today.

I recently attended a Women Entrepreneur conference. There was a lady, a successful venture capitalist that was delivering the keynote address. While talking about biases at the workplace, she related a story that stayed with me for many days.

In a previous job with a Fortune 500 company, the HR team conducted an experiment. They sent 2 CV’s for the same job description for a fitment check. The interesting part of the experiment was that the CV actually belonged to the same person…the name on 1 CV was male and on the other was female. The fitment results for the CV which had the male name was much higher than the CV that had the female name.

The biggest challenge is that most people are unaware of their biases. You cant really improve a condition you don’t even know exists.

Building Awareness of Unconscious Biases’ and making the Hiring process “Objective” and “Neutral” is key to promoting  Gender Diversity !!!!!