This is in continuation of my earlier post ‘Stay happy’… I continue to think of how the beginning of the day is so important to set the pace and mood for all that follows; till the day ends… But, most of us are in an awful mood in the precious morning hours. Lets break that jinx, here and now.

Here are 10 simple and great ways to begin your day in a nice way..

1. Begin the day with some great music you love; let it be of any genre. just that it has to pep you up, and fill your mind. And wear a smile on hearing that. Most morning mood issues are just because we are blank in the mind, and the void attracts negativity. And by doing things listed here, we are just attempting to get positive energy flow into us.
2. Ensure in the first few minutes after you wake up and get done with your usual morning chores, you get going with some brisk activity… can be a jog, some cycling, laughing with your wife and children, reading little of  a good book.. Anything that does not keep you idle… Morning idleness is the biggest sinner.. Be extremely active…
3. When you get up from the bed, get up and move around with deliberate gratitude. Count your steps as you do your morning chores, and for each step, say thanks to anyone/everyone you chose – can be your spouse, some friend you touched you, your loving kids… could be just anyone whom you can express gratitude. And there are so many of them, who we come across by the hour, everyday. Just that in our purposeless activities, we fail to see them.
4. Visualize a great day in your mind…. with all details, color and candor of what your perfect day should look like.. that sale close, that great meeting, your best pitch, shopping with your spouse etc.. In most times, what is visualized becomes real later in the day.
5. Start the day with a to-do list creation as the 1^st task… Let it contain not only professional tasks, but even personal and social task.. Including something mundane and as light as watering the tree, or cleaning up the desk… and off-course having fun with your family and friends. End of day, tick off what you have done… it gives you a feeling of achievement, and when you make this list, you will do most of what is important.
6. Take a piece of paper, and quickly jot down 5 things you did right the previous day, and also 5 things that you messed.. include all trivia, like not smiling at the receptionist of your workplace, abusing someone in the traffic snarl… This is one of the best ways to introspect.. and get to being a better person.
7. Make one or two small resolutions for the day… not necessarily big and life changing, but simple ones that will make you a better person than the previous day… like ‘I will smile at every human encounter’ or ‘I will say thanks to all during the day’…..
8. Help in the household chores… Pick up some simple household chore and help your spouse quicken the morning chores.. again anything simple would do.. Most of all, it keeps you active, and also saves time in the family for more things to be done.
9. Close the doors and sing a song, dance a few steps, laugh at yourself looking at the mirror, admire you from head to toe, look at how confident and nice you are as a person…
10. As your kid wakes up, lie down next to him or her, and just catch up with what they think… could be about their friends, school, a fight in yesterday’s gully cricket, some conflict in them… Just start of and run a conversation for just 5 minutes… You will see a different world, and get a perspective of what things are…

By no means are these are not the only ways you can start of… There could be many and you can design a positive start to the day, with any of these as cues….

Have this as a daily mantra… the first hour after you wake up is the golden hour, that sets the ball rolling rest of the day… By making this active  and positive, your day can be worth its weight in gold… in joy, happiness, and fulfil ment.

( and you can also do all these at anytime during the day to make a great life!!)

Whether stress kills or not, the talk of stress is so dominant in our lives, at home and work… be it a professional, a homemaker, or a school going child, ‘stress’ seems to the most hated, but most spoken word…

The only way to change this is to use opposite thinking whenever the thought of stress occurs.. Try this: if someone says ‘stress’, what if a couple of people around chant ‘happy, happy, smiling, smiling…’

Society and the media, not necessarily in that order have made it a fancy of our times to highlight stress…. How many times have you come across a story of people who have lived life happily, contended with whatever they could make of this wonderful journey! There seem to be no takers, or it is that stress sells better in this world! And if that is so, then, are all of us collectively driving this habit…!!

Well, this is not to speak of semantics, but directed at pushing each of us to our limits and extremes of positivity, and consequent happiness….

If you can kill yourself silently, by latent and potent ‘stress’, isn’t it much better, worthy and life saving, if we do the Opposite –  live happily, stay joyful, and enjoy every moment of life….

Should not more and more of us should go around and say.. Hey, you know I am happy, and am happy for no reason… sounds silly? Nope…. As though, “Hey I am stressed for no reason” did not sound silly and outright stupid?!

Look around and we see anyone and everyone ask if there is a reason to be happy… Happiness is a natural form of existence and hence, it needs no reason to be in that state… If you can be upset, agitated and downright negative for no reason, then why don’t you apply the same rule and stay happy…

Be happy for no reason, Celebrate for no reason, and just enjoy life and every single moment of the journey!

So, when you are not feeling nice, and feel low for no reason and for any reason, think opposite… Force happiness on you, just by quickly and deliberately placing the opposite of what you feel, and with a little time and effort, you seem to be happy, joyful and in a productive state of mind!

Some research shows that most people who carried so much of stress when they went to bed after a long and hectic day at work, suffered palpitations, and even massive cardiac arrest only in the waking or early hours of the day… and just closely observe.. you would see that in a sedentary life, all of us, sorry, atleast most of us, feel grumpy and grouchy only in the beginning of the day….. left unattended, you nurture the same feeling and so, gone is another great day of life by worrying, not even knowing the reasons for it…

It is best to use the power of opposite thoughts in such a situation… kill the morning grumpy, grouchy face by going for a quick jog, listening to an inspirational audio tape, some indoor cycling, or just anything that rushes blood to your heart and mind…

Being negative and grumpy is indeed unnatural, and that is the reason they are life taking… Only happiness if life saving, and anything which is not happiness is against life itself… precious and potent life’s of you, me, and each one of us….

And not only in the morning, this can be done any time of the day… Just change the place where you are for a few minutes, take a stroll, listen to a few lines of great music on your iPod, just do something and get out that negative flow.

So, keep this a rule… when you are not happy, just push you to think opposite… Action is the antidote to worry and negativity.. and it can be any action, even silly…. Let things be silly, its ok, but its more important to Live than anything else….

Practice this for sometime, and see your moving to your natural state… being happy, staying positive, and consequently, produce more results…

and make the best our of Life…. and this journey….!

Most of us are familiar, and in all probability be party to Monday con calls – on rather anyday con calls, just that as much as we know, most of them are done on Mondays; most organizations think that this is the most potent tool they have to enhance the performance of the team, and as a consequence the organization. Fact is the opposite of it is a whole lot of cases…..

A brief looking back on how con calls came to be – new CEO’s of large corporations used it as a potent tool to connect with the line managers, understand the business – for which he/she is new, give his own incisive insights about what is likely to evolve in the coming future, take genuine feedback and opinions on what is happening on the ground, provide directions, give a strategic insight and outside world view and so on….

Carried on with a decisive objective over a period of time, con-calls  were one of the most potent tool to create and foster operating mechanisms, bring in appropriate directions to the line managers, and in turn the respective teams, and thus percolated across the entire length and breadth of the organizations.

Smart, efficient and look-into-the future leaders and CEO’s used the deceptively simple looking con-calls to gain insights and make inroads and move in the strategic direction, galvanizing all the stakeholders towards the market-share and revenue-share goals of the company.

Anyone who cares to glean through business history of how and why social/business operating mechanisms came in, will appreciate the immense value proffered by con-calls.

Cut to the present; at the cost of generalizing, I would opine that con-calls are just time wasters in most companies now; Instead of serving sensitive and strategic goals, they just pander to the ego’s of whomever chairs these calls, which are void of an agenda, and used to just override subordinate views, and in many cases just involve in verbal bravado.

In most organizations, the ritual is carried out just to verify collated data, and speak about unrealistic things, with no cognition of what is happening on the ground, and what issues and challenges the foot soldiers of the organization go through on the way to business goals.

Rather than serving to set direction and advise on what could help moving towards better market share and better revenues..  such calls just waste valuable organization resources, and even worse, just de-motivate an entire lot by their tone and tenor.

It would make eminent sense for the senior management or the HR of present day organizations to ponder if an SOP for con-calls will help.

Just by measuring the RoI on such con-calls, let’s all hope that they either turn to be more goal driven and productive or just don’t happen at all….

I would request views on this. Please comment…

To many work is worship and that’s really fine, but one has enjoy what you do; and the only way to enjoy what you do is if you add value to work, and work adds value to you.

Here ‘value’ does not mean just the monetary pie; it means 360* value – to you as a person, as someone who aspires to grow in the chosen field, and in turn extended to your colleagues, your family, the society you live in. In a nutshell, your entire ecosystem.

We often here ourselves lamenting “I am just not happy with what am I doing” and yet we continue the same motions for years and years. The other common refrain is “I don’t know what I should do to enjoy work!

Do those statements sound familiar. If they do then listen up, this articlesis something you must read.

If you aren’t enjoying work, the first thing to note is that there is just no point in blaming all those around you – your present employer, colleagues, HR, your… I am sure you get the idea. You and only you are responsible! So what you need to do is to create your ‘world of work’… just exactly as you would want it to pan out.

Before you go on that it’s too late to make a change, remember  the oft repeated Chinese proverb says “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now.”

One shouldn’t be scared of change. A lot of times we act like a well built ship that just waits in the harbor, refusing to explore the vast expanses, challenges, and eventual fruits of the sea, just because of fear. We use excuses such as lack of risk appetite, family commitments, a comfortable and cozy present and what not… the reasons can so go on as much as the human mind can imagine… rather than imagining good, most of the times, the ‘safe and comfortable’ psyche in us plays truant and forces us to image the worst!

Another thing we need to do is to give this “work” thing much more planning and thought. We need to do an honest appraisal of our personaity, formal qualifications, strengths and weaknesses, and above all, our innate qualities and habits. If we are honest to ourself  then it is certain that our ‘ship’ will sail to victory, even though the waters may be unchartered! By refusing to plan and think enough, we are just plain squandering the wonders life can show us, sans the slug and grin in just working for the sake of work.

Chose tremendous joy and happiness, and exposing your best to the world, just by a little mind-time… let that little time be a week, a month, 6 months or even a year…  It is such a great investment, and if it can lead you to greater heights in life and career, then why not spend that time? It is a worthy investment, one that will throw up a whole new perspective.

In the process, ‘work life’ is now at your terms, something you will enjoy and bring you sheer joy…  You go with the flow, and so there is no energy expended. With each step you will propel further with greater force and move ahead, sans any resistance!

So, are you ready for the long haul? A cheerful, successful and contended haul…. Yes, you are. So get going now…  Vroom!

(Thanks to Subroto Bagchi, for bringing “The Professional” to the world, and to my loving son Janardhan for getting me lay hands on “The Professional” last evening)

Mahadeva came to cosmopolitan Bangalore, as his dear mother walked out of her native village and her own family in a huff. Mother and the child Mahadeva took to the streets of Bangalore for a living, and the mother does chores to grow child Mahadeva. Until a day she became unwell, and had to get herself with son to the Government Victoria Hospital in Bangalore. As she is treated for a terminal illness, Mahadeva makes the outside of the hospital his playground, gets a new world, full of acquaintances, and a sense of kinship in this world.

Then one day, someone came and told the little Mahadeva that his mother was dead (Dead, What? – little Mahadeva) and the mother was buried as the hospital could not wait for the little son to come back after his play.

The boy has nowhere to go, and also refuses to go back to his native village even as a few people in the hospital ward raise money for that purpose. He made the hospital his home, and as he grew, started running errands there, like the person who did the same when his mother was brought in to be treated at the Government Victoria hospital.

The hospital was Mahadeva’s Universe; and he had grown up; one day, the cops asked Mahadeva to bury an unclaimed body and gave him Rs.200/- for the job. That accident turned to be Mahadeva’s profession, and he eventually became ‘the’ guy to go to for Bangalore’s unclaimed bodies. He carried out the task religiously, and every time there was an unclaimed body, the man summoned was Mahadeva.  His rigor was like : Pull the stiff body from the morgue, hire a horse drawn carriage, take the body to the burial ground, dig the soil and bury the corpse – all by himself for just Rs.200/-. After every such burial Mahadeva would be back, hanging around the hospital waiting for the next assignment! As years passed, Mahadeva bettered his job – even paying due respect with flowers at the time of burial – a practice he got when he once buried someone close to his heart.

With the kind of passion, dedication and commitment to work, Mahadeva was much in demand – he had his own horse drawn carriage and later, thanks to some nice human beings, he got an auto-rickshaw.

His business has grown now, and the horse which was his carriage and died later is now his logo in his business card. Now his son has joined him too.

Till date, Mahadeva has buried more than 42000 corpses, and has won accolades and phenomenal recognition for his selfless service to the community! The Chief Minister of Karnataka has felicitated Mahadeva for his selfless service to the city of Bangalore. Even the petrol pumps he goes to fill in fuel for his hearse-auto do not charge him!

Mahadeva is proud and happy of his work, and contended.

Mahadeva, the high-performer; and a true professional.

Lessons for us : A professional is not someone who is just professionally qualified, or carries the designation on his business card. A professional has the ability to work unsupervised, and has the ability to certify the completion of his work.

Like Mahadeva, who needed no supervision; who attended to his call of duty, come day or night, hell or highwater! He certified the completion of his work! He has no employer – for the Victoria Hospital, he is just an outsourcing agency for disposal of unclaimed bodies. He does not have a boss who writes his appraisal, gives him feedback….!

In most work environments, people who produce anything of economic value need no supervision. A person who needs supervision is NO professional. He is an amateur, even an apprentice!

So, are all of us true professionals?!

(Inspired by “The Professional” by Subroto Bagchi, Penguin Books India 2009)

Commandment One:   Live by the power of gratitude

Gratitude is one of the best ways to live a complete life. Gratitude is by far the most powerful positive emotion that is filled with energy to negate all ill & negative feelings in us. Just take a conscious effort to focus on filling our mind and heart with gratitude – there is no end to what we can be grateful for – you can be grateful to God, to nature, to our parents, our loving kids, our siblings, to our boss, our co-workers, to a handful of people who touched upon our life today, everyday, and possibly even in this very minute.

Think of what and who you can be grateful for, everyday when you wake up in the morning, and you will see the quality of the day improve. It is such a huge contrast to waking up grudgingly for some mean reason, or even no reason.

A thanksgiving state of mind gives you a rush of adrenalin for your mind and body! Make sure you practice conscious gratitude from now!, and you will have the most powerful fuel that will propel your life-rocket to happiness and success!

Commandment Two: Avidly visualize what you want from Life.

Imaging is the most powerful tool in creating a life of your choice. It has worked wonders to all those who have attained unparalleled success and happiness in any vocation they chose to be in! Imaging anything you chose to have and wish to be, and no sooner will you see your vision turning into reality! Sustained visualization gets etched in the subconscious after a certain period of time, and after that the power of the subconscious takes over the actual process of creation of reality as imaged.

Practice dynamic visualization – Imagine what you seek in all the color, shade, be in that situation which is the final outcome – be in the midst of your happy family, in that great getaway, in that CEO job – make the image as dynamic, interactive and colorful, and as real as it can get in your mind.  After time, you will see the same in absolute reality and even the colors and shades you created in mind will come to existence.

Combine imaging with gratitude well in advance – gratitude to the cosmic universe to giving all that your want – and you are in the pathway to a great, happy, and successful life – all of which as exactly as you wanted!

Commandment Three: Have you mission statement written.

It is a misplaced notion that only organizations and corporations of the world need to have mission statements written. Individuals – you and me – must write down mission statements for our life, and these statements must be the raison d etre of Life.

Writing down such a statement is not something that is done in a huff. A considerable amount of thought must go into the exercise, and the statement shall clearly articulate the prime intents of what we expect in the journey of life.

There is no age barrier for this – if you are twenty or fifty, such a mission statement brings in a huge sense of direction to what we do. It brings in a sense of purpose, and also makes us set goals towards achieving what is stated in the mission statement.

The mission statement is also dynamic, and can be worked on, after time frames – it can be modified with the times, as long as the core message is in tact – for example, if ‘providing everything for a happy family’ is the mission, the broader statement can encompass anything that serves this mission. The mission can be anything to do with various facets of life – personal, family, money, growing up children, running a business – anything that touches life, and living.

Commandment Four: Link your mission to Goals in Life

Goals are very important to keep life filled with positive action. Like the flowing water in the stream is fresh, the blood of life is fresh when you keep moving towards goals you set for yourself. And these goals are so potent when they are linked to the mission of our life.

Life is fun only when there are goals to it! Living without goals, is just vegetable existence, and it leads to boredom which takes the verve and fun out of life. Goals can be either qualitative or quantitative. And it is good to have a mix of qualitative and quantitative goals. Being happy and Staying positive is, for example qualitative, and reaching a professional position, earning x amount of money, is quantitative as well.

When there are written goals in place – be it personal, professional, monetary, family or whatever – we tend to work around those goals, which bring in so much of direction and power to our life.  It is important to have goals for all areas of life, and not just one part of life – that leads to imbalance, and creates pressure on only a few areas.

Life is all about being well-balanced, aimed at being happy, contended, and achieving a few things which we need to; goals facilitate that.

The happiest, contended and successful people are those who have written goals, and worked to make the goals come to reality.

A combination of having a purposeful mission, with goals, and avid imagination makes life so much purposeful and positive.

Commandment Five: Manage YOU well, and manage time well.

It is oft-stated: All of us have the same amount of time in disposal. Yet, we all keep blaming ‘not having enough time’ to do things that are most important. In reality, there is nothing like managing time – what we need to manage is ourselves, and the activity we do.

If we decide to do what is most important in getting to our goals and being happy, and staying positive all the time, the seemingly humongous task to managing the time-monster is so easy… Focus on accomplishment and not activity. Cut off all the time wasters from your schedule – needless talk, bickering, mindless TV watching, useless internet activity – just do a little analysis on how you spend time, and you will see so much time spent on ‘time-eaters’ in your life.

Packing the schedule full of work and no fun is no better self management.  To repeat, the goal of life is to be happy, joyful, and not to carry stress and sorrow to the grave. Sprinkle your schedule with a mix of work, fun, family time, social time- built around the broad goals of life.

Once this is done, managing YOU gets better, and managing time falls in place.

Commandment Six: Never spend a moment worrying.

It has been seen that the biggest time waster and the single most deterrent to a happy life is the worry habit – worrying about this thing or that thing, big or small, important or trivia, and sometimes even being worried about nothing at all..! So much time and energy is expended in this habit, knowing well that it is sheer waste of time and energy, and moreover, something that saps the positivity in each of us.

The easiest thing to kill this worry habit is action… when you start wasting even a minute worrying as a habit, just change the pattern and do something… Contrast the worry pattern by a loud laugh, a kick on the wall, a hit on the punch bag, or just something that sets you in motion.

Just resolve that you will never ever waste time by worrying. This is one of the most definitive things you can do to live a happy and successful life. And not just that – your family, friends, co-workers – anyone who is in your circle of influence and concern will feel joy and happiness radiating out of you.

Follow these 6 commandments, and you will see the difference in the quality of your life… now and always.

All of us take for granted one crucial and most vital facet of life – the family and the relationships there… Our life, sure I am true is littered with instances, where we vent all our frustrations and feelings to those in the family – the loved spouse, the wonderful kid, and the most precious father and mother to whom we owe so much for being what we are in the social milieu.

Family, for today’s hi-flying pro, is the place to rationalize the most disgusting and condonable behavior, in the guise of being stressed at work… and also the lack of the ability to assert at the work place and draw lines with bosses, peers, subordinates, and make reasonable demands with all the professional stakeholders!

And as a result, one exhibits irrational, unacceptable, and downright disgusting behavior, with our own families… little do we realize that the bedrock of our happiness, wellbeing, prosperity.. is the Family….

It is essential for each one of us to realize this, and display the best of behavior, conduct; with all in our family – to the loving spouse, great kids, parents and everyone at home… it is only they who accept us unconditionally, day in and day out! Lets redeem this commitment to the most precious place in the world.. our home!!

Here are 2 real life situations which speak volumes on what could be the best way of exit management, and which serves to beef up the employer value proposition (EVP) in the eyes of all stakeholders.

Victor has served the midsized company from inception, built the brand assiduously by bringing in clients, relationships, revenues, through team-building, and a whole lot of relevant and related tangibles and intangibles. In his stint of over 2 years with the organization, never has he sought any goodies, upped the ante,  nor voiced his environmental constraints, nd has accepted decisions of the company, owing to the market conditions with grace and poise. This, despite even a lot of monetary setbacks, and going back on benefits that are promised & legally binding; and a lot of initial promise on how he will have a skyrocketing professional growth, and how his role and compensation will grow as he meets his expectations.  Even when Victor has many setbacks on his personal front, he continues his work, sans any attention by the organization.

Time comes for Victor to move on, to nurture his personal and professional life as he desires.  He communicates this to the person above in the hierarchy, and his resignation is accepted, taking facts into consideration. He serves his responsibilities; in the interregnum before he is released, a senior most person in the organization comes up and tells him that he cannot go; that he will struggle for survival (issues like food and shelter?!), if he sticks to his decision. Veiled threats are held at him for no reason. It is harassment in its diplomatic form of sorts; many in the corporate office of the organization and even some erstwhile colleagues are pushed to throw muck at Victor; this continues even as he leaves graciously.  He quietly moves to take care of his personal and professional priorities, blind to most of this ‘throwing muck’.

Now to John; John has worked with a large MNC, a leader in its space in the country for a little over 2 years; his stint has been fine, his contributions being above average. His presence is always acknowledged by leaders in the organization, and those leaders make it a point to call him for anything that was to do with the good of the long-term interests of the MNC.

John, wanting professional advancement decides to move on, and communicates the same to his functional head. The head refuses to accept his resignation come what may.  The next morning, to the huge surprise of John, his boss flies in to his place from the corporate office, and expresses gratitude for the work John has done, and pleads him to stay. The boss says any issues can be sorted out, unconditionally, within the framework of the organizational policies.

However, John sticks to his decision, which is finally accepted half heartedly by the boss. The boss also advises John to facilitate in getting an appropriate person for John’s replacement, and also to help in the client transitioning etc.

In the meanwhile most national leaders from the organization continuously communicate to John, checking out is they can help and make him stay. John’s boss even went to the extent to advising the HR to check if John would prefer to report to someone else, yet stay back in the company.  HR also is constantly in communication, and checks what all separation issues need to be addressed; by when moneys of settlement are needed etc.

On the last day of John’s service, his boss again travels down to his location, and bids farewell with lavish praises. Most regional leaders of the organization and most teams were in attendance; even an hour before the close of that day, a functional head tells John to join his team, and he would take care of professional and personal needs.

To cap it all, John’s boss writes a mail to every employee in the company, across the country, and marked to all regional and global leaders, that John’s work at the company was great, and it was a matter of pride to have had him working for the company; wishing him the best moving forward. HR also ensures that all what is due to John is taken care off, without any need for following from his side.

From these real-life stories, it is very clear that John will be a great brand ambassador carrying the brand flag forever. Needless to say, Victor will be a bitter man, carrying only bitter memories.

Managing employee exit, in commonsense parlance, is all about etching great memories of the organization, in the mind and heart of the exiting employee.

One step ahead, it is high time organizations had a formal SOP on managing exits well!

What’s the ME brand?

Each of our ME brands are work in progress, and a sort of focused and continuous & RIGHT self-speak efforts are needed to communicate our thoughts through our brand ME. What we are seen as is what we communicate through our ME brand-speak.

Brand ME also makes sure that you communicate your position sans any ambiguity in the professional marketplace, and equally so, on the personal front – as a spouse, as a parent and as a socially responsible person.

To throw a little illustration, if you want you/your ME brand to be seen in as a successful professional in your space, then your walk and talk ought to be in sync with all that is needed to be so – both the hardware: the efforts needed, the knowledge & skills you ought to possess, and most of all the power to execute – you will carry all this and more to be seen and also be recognized as a successful or to-be-successful professional.

And the ME brand-speak shall be seen as the ‘software’ – that makes your hardware to be seen by all those in the relevant marketplace – be it the place of work, or home, or the social ecosystem.

Your ME brand speak will talk the entire walk you can do, amply well, and sort of loud and clear in the marketplace. Loud and clear does never mean being brash about what you are made off, but is being unambiguously clear about what would make you stand out and be different out there – be it in the kind of work you do, or the sales you can achieve, or the knowledge/core competence you will bring to the table in any place.

The ME brand speak would apply equally to any work and personal situation – you need to talk the walk you do and want to do as a parent, a child, a associate in any event and so on – this can be in any place, in any time and in any situation.

The ME brand speak is also so important and crucial in bridging the gap between perception and reality, more from the extent of the value you add in any given place. I am sure most of us agree that we did not get that deal, or get that hike or promotion or anything measurable and tangible just because it was not communicated or packaged in sync with what was delivered or done in reality.

The more you think of what you keep telling everyone or what all those around you see, is more of what your ME brand-speak is. Whether this is in sync with what you as an individual are or what your true capabilities are, is more a function of your ME brand speak, that any other factor.

Its’ worth so much to gather your thoughts together to create your own ‘ME brand speak now’. It’s also a wonderful exercise to introspect all your facets of life, and create an appropriate ME brand-speak, that reflects you in the right perspective to all those in the marketplace.

So, what’s your ME brand-speak? Are you packaging you as much what your true capabilities and qualities are? Do it now, for a better & greater LIFE…..

We have read and written volumes about hiring the right person with the best skills and competencies, but hiring for happiness is a class in itself, and doing so will only foster a great and happy work place. Needless to say, and I dont think anyone will differ – a happy organisation ought to be a productive and winning organisation.

Here are a few tangibles,  that hiring for happiness would bring in to the organisation, making life happier for the organisation, its team and its topline and bottom line.

Happiness is being self disciplined.

This is a most important differential that will add immense value to the workforce and the teams. Whilst there would be so many hazy and nebulous definitions of what happiness means to each one of us, the fact remains that happiness is rather simple – people who are more self aware, know what they are, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and understand the value they can bring to the table. Happy persons are grounded in reality, and aspire to achieve incrementally, by being sincere, illustrious, creative, and solution centric.

Happiness is being satisfied and contended.

Happiness comes from being driven by the self and one’s own inherent values. So when a happy person comes in in any role, is a satisfied person, and takes his work head on with remarkable agility, and with a happy goal in mind. The absence of dissonance is by far the biggest positive factor that would contribute to workplace productivity.

Happiness is being a better team player and co-worker.

A happy employee, but for rare exceptions to a decimal percentile, is a good team player, and when many happy men and women are an integral part of the team, the performance is optimal, moving towards the team goals and corporate goals. The team comprising happy employees is a galvanised and energetic teams, that will be driven by happy leaders, who think that winning and happiness are just synonyms.

Happiness is being infectiously optimistic.

When someone at the workplace is infectitiously optimistic, he or she takes on any challenge headon, comes in with oodles of creativity, thus proffering solutions to workplace problems, looking at client and customer happiness as a goal, and crafting all products/services with mutual goals in mind. Happiness is the only state of mind that thinks win win which is the most desirable business strategy.

Happiness is being motivated.

Being in a happy state of mind, is being self motivated to accomplish ones’ personal and professional goals. In fact happiness creates a natural flow in the person that would not be possible with any other factor of motivation. Power, position, and money will rank far behind happiness as a facilitator to motivate. There are enough and more best employer surveys to drive home the point that the best paymasters are not the best and happy employers. And many leaders and HR professionals across the spectrum of diverse businesses will testify to the role a happy work force can play, and what money as a driving force cannot achieve.

As professionals, if each of us aspire to build happy teams, keep the customers and vendors happy, and keep the board happy, it’s the best possible winnning scenario. And the topline and bottomline can only be something everyone can be happy about.

Indeed, the best way to keep the employees at all levels of the organisaition is to keep them happy; might sound simple, but it would mean humungous efforts by the stakeholders, with HR in the drivers seat.  Employeee engagement can get to its best with the happiness of the employees and the workforce as its pivot.

This is not so much for the lack on any action, but more owing to the lack of an inner desire…. A purposeful direction, led from deep in the heart, and a self inquiry into what-is-it-we-want-to-do to be “happy, satisfied, and contended”.

Owing to societal and peer pressures, most of our lives are in a sense spent in doing the motions – being on the run to climb that corporate ladder, make that so much more money, to buy that fabulous villa, to buy that expensive sedan and what not….but with very little realization that the lack of an inner sense of purpose and direction as to what we need REALLY do.

A lack of purpose and not being driven from the heart is the primary cause for the now infamous word ‘stress’…..  And the extent to which stress has occupied our mind spaces all over are mind boggling.. all over the place, day in and day out you read about stress, see stress, hear stress… and in the process imagine more stress than that actually could be in you! And what is obnoxious is the new trend that has set in – adolescent stress, stress in youngsters and kids alike… Looks like we are consciously increasing the usage of the word, by debating again and again on the cause-effect; we should, and must alleviate the usage of the word, and its cause.

Mapping our goals, and building them into our individual development plans, working to achieve them, is one way that we could build a culture of alleviating stress.  At the outset, this may seem to be making a loud prophesy, but the fact remains that creating and individual development plan at each stage of life, only fosters a positive mindset, and creates focus that is unruffled by what happens around in the external environment.

Each one of us should work on our own Individual Development plan, that clearly articulates what changes we need to seek and make in us, be in behavioral, the kind of work we do, the kind of social impact we make, the kind of growth we intend to see year on year in our career, family and life. The link this has to bust and alleviate stress is THIS – to articulate and write down clearly a plan of this kind, will take a lot of thinking and re-thinking on what we ought to do, and ought not to do. It also will naturally bring out ways of honing our innate capabilities, as the more you want to do and achieve, you also would see what the heart leads to.

Hitches in making plans for our self can be overcome by candid discussions with a confidante we would have – this could be a spouse, a teacher, a colleague, or anyone who will know some of what we are, and at times, we would need to understand our strengths from others too!

Such a well written IDP will build in it and qualify/quantity all milestones, work-in-progress, with timelines, and even state the tangible/intangible contributions we ought to make at home, to spouse and kids, at the workplace, to the organization and to the society at large.

While the broad plan will be sacrosanct for us personally, reviews would help us make the relevant and needy course correction.  The plan should also be robust, dynamic, and potent that it will essentially serve as a tool to bring out the best in each one of us.

Following such a course of action will primarily ensure that we are left un-hassled by the rush of everyday life, and an urge to follow our own plan will make us immune from a whole lot of external environment issues and how we react to situations. For any external stimuli, good or otherwise, the response will be centered on how we are governed by the plan we have.

For ourselves apart, we should also foster the culture of having IDP’s amongst family, colleagues and anyone who is in our scheme of life.

So, are you ready with your individual development plan?!

Allow me to help you WIN… and WIN in every single thing you do… 

Come; let’s make winning a habit; a very easy habit; a habit that calls for constant and persistent practice of the mind… Most of us are made to believe that winning is something complicated…  BUT THE TRUTH is otherwise…. Winning is quite simple and easy…. And it becomes a habit – once we decide to carry an attitude of a winner… perpetual winners…in our minds…..

When you look around, do you see that most of the Winners, win again and again, and win always, seldom failing in anything?! Yes; they DO. And there is no denying the practice, continuous knowledge acquisition, mental and physical challenges these top winners undergo…. BUT THE MOST CRITICAL INGREDIENT of their constant and increasing success is their mental make up…. When they play, they play ONLY to win…..When they work, they work only to WIN…. When they plan LIFE, they plan ONLY to win… The cardinal LIFE rule they follow is PLAY TO WIN…. And WIN TO PLAY…..

Think about this…..How many acts and deeds you do, be it big or small, when you do, commence, you get in with a plan ONLY to WIN… a decisive, unassailable and incorrigible mental frame that says to you ”I am at the winners stand, receiving the accolades the winner takes….”? And if you can take time to pause for a few moments and introspect, you would discover for SURE that whenever you entered the fray – the fray of the deed or act, in any context – WITH THE VICTORY in mind, you eventually WON with remarkable ease….

I would like to illustrate this with one of my own life’s instances…. In the first year of my college, a group of friends were at the cafeteria; and suddenly one of my good friends came saying that there is a extempore oratory contest in the college… Suddenly, my eyes sparkled, and there was so much of energy gushing into my mind… and I went ahead to the contest – amongst about 20 of my college mates – and extempore I spoke so well that I got a standing ovation, and the whole college know me from then on… there was no looking back in speaking contests, intercollege debates etc.

I can confidently tell you now that, more than anything else – my knowledge of the subject, my diction, my command of the language, what made me what I became was my getting into the contest with my mental chemistry… In my mind, I refused to see anything but WINNING..  and the most importantly, my thought process only hovered around what I wanted…and I was just ignorant of anything else.. who I was competing with, the topic, the podium, the audience etc was all of less importance…

Sure, most of you have these WINNING moments in your lives too…. And just think of those moments again and again…. What comes to the fore is the mindset and decisive urge to Win…. and be always at the victory stand.…

Bottom line is this… YOU FIRST WIN in your MIND… and then in the DEED… This is the universal rule of winning all through LIFE….

In all your endeavors, get into the first step ONLY with WINNING in the mind… If there is an iota of doubt or wavering, realize that, and consciously train and command your MIND to Win….. You will win… YOU WILL WIN.

The story goes, as I read somewhere,  that Dr Norman Vincent Peale was walking by a tattoo shop when a confused looking young man came out of the shop with a tattoo in his right arm that read “Born to Lose”. Dr Peale asked the tattoo artist about it and the tattoo artist replied…. “ I did ask the young man if he was sure that he wanted to state “Born to lose” in his arm and the young man was pretty stubborn in that. A surprised Dr Peale asked the tattoo artist – “Is’nt that surprising?” For which the artiste replied “Not really! Much before he tattooed it on his arm, he has firmly tattooed it in his brain, and his body tattoo act is just a reflection of his mind tattoo”. 

That brings us to our topic, the power of mind tattoos’. Every single act of us, big or small, positive or negative, winning or losing, good acts and deeds or otherwise are a sheer reflection of the cluster of small and big thought tattoos we keep etching in our mind, be it consciously or unconsciously,  And this mind tattooing process is the most powerful in determining what the outcome is in reality. 

So, it should be our conscious and subconscious endeavor to keep tattooing our mind with thoughts that are ONLY about winning, what we want be, want to reach, want to achieve, that perfect day as desired,  and about that ideal job/career and all that wealth that we would want to accrue in our lives….. ALL THAT IS SOUGHT BY US FOR A GREAT LIFE. 

Call this positive mind tattooing…. And our effort here MUST BE to continuously and consciously strive to tattoo our mind, ONLY all that is desired in reality…. And what else do all of us desire than the very best in all walks of life…  Let us tattoo these desires in mind in as much positive detail as we can….   With the smell of victory, with love and affection for the near and dear ones, for winning at the work place, and for recreating the hearts’ desires to the mind… and creating an ideal life in our own terms….. 

While doing this positive mind tattooing, it is quite but natural that in the mood swings we have, there will be situations when negatives get tattooed in the mind too…  The easiest way to persist on our terms of life is to quickly erase this negative mind tattoo with a more and say bigger positive mind tattoo. And when we perceive the negative tattoo is close to affecting our success/life agenda, we have to be ruthless and aggressive is working on creating positive mind tattoos, only resting when we are thoroughly convinced that the positive tattoo has erased and prevailed over the negative. 

All of us are born to ONLY win, and none of us are here to lose in Life.  If anyone of us is losing it is because we are etching our mind with unnatural negative tattoos, rather than etching it with positive tattoos, which are natural, easy and a part of the flow of life….. 

Now on, be a consistent positive mind tattoo artist… not only for you but do that bit of positive mind tattooing on all those around us…  Inside each one of all us, there is a spectacular positive mind tattoo artist…..  

Persistence could communicate different meanings to different people, depending upon how it is interpreted, imaged and communicated – but by far it is the most singular differentiator and determinant for success in any endeavour. Just pick up any literature in goals and success – a Brian Tracy, Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins or a Brian Mayne – and be sure that this is mentioned.

And persistence is not about those huge and impossible tasks which we need to sweat it out to do. It is just having the mental strength and ability to ‘persist’ in doing that simple task that would lead to some accomplishment, set as a goal in one’s life.

To be just able to spend 30 minutes a day, consistently, in developing or nurturing a life skill, would lead to an achievement that would still be great and big enough to make a life difference. This could be hard exercising if one looks at a physical goal, writing 2 pages a day if it is a career and passion goal, or spending 30 minutes uninterrupted with spouse and son/daughter if it is a family goal. While it might appear to be a small thing at the outset, the key challenge here would be consistency – doing it everyday sans a break, and at the same time, and most important, in a ‘positive mental frame’.

Winning is a habit and outcome of persistence. And believe me, if one wants to win in life and all personal endeavours, being persistent will be the biggest differentiator.

Creating new habits is all about persistence. Just try to commit yourself to a new habit – as trivial as waking up 30 minutes early every day – the mental challenge and the accompanying physical challenge will be immense. You will need the power of the mind and a diehard commitment – a communiqué to the subconscious – to ensure that this happens.

The easier side in this is that you need to stretch only for 21 days and then it becomes natural – a habit that stays with you for life – and most importantly facilitates accomplishment in any area. I would suggest that everyone wanting to live life read and commit themselves to The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, the fable by Robin Sharma.

To make persistence a winning habit, I would urge – please, please strive to stretch your mind that extra bit to do something everyday. That something would be a key life skill or a winning quality in professional or personal life – anything you think is worth doing and trying.

Persist, create a winning habit and succeed! !

Without a seed of thought of success in the mind, no amount of gargantuan effort will invite success in reality. After all, isn’t all we need and want first created in the mind, and then subsequently in reality?  With that being so, how can ‘success’ be any different? To attain success, extend it, and multiply it to all facets of life. First and foremost, feel it in the mind.

So being a successful man, woman, son, daughter, boss, subordinate…is first thought and rehearsed in the mind. It is only this dress rehearsal in our mind that transforms itself into real success in every walk of life.

Nothing succeeds like success, is also putting the famous ‘law of attraction’ to work for us. One single and continuous thought of success in the mind, attracts more and more success in the mind, and that one thought in the mind manifesting to reality, attracts the manifestation of all thoughts of success into reality, thus creating successful lives for us.

Right now, commit to planting that seed of success thought in your mind. Think more success, attract more success. Fill your life with success. After all, nothing succeeds like success. Nothing will ever succeed like having success in our minds.

Here is a contrarian thought. Ignore your inherent weaknesses, and spend all the time and resources in honing your inherent strengths. You will do a lot of good to you, your life, and work. 

Many contemporary leadership lessons speak of the need to do what you are good at. Decisively identify your strengths and do something which is pretty close to your core competence.

You have a handful of a mix of shining gold coins, and some rusted old copper coins. You would do good to just ignore the rusty dusty copper coins and just put all your time and energy into how well you can exploit and make good of the gold coins on hand.  Wasting your time and energy on cleaning and making the rusty copper coins is really not going to move you up in life. You would be wasting your time. And the cardinal rule in managing time is – putting time to its best use here and now. So, your time is not going to be best used by cleaning the rust and dust of the copper in you. Just do not give any importance to the copper in you (weaknesses) and hone your gold (strengths) now and always.

Most of us have been taught and guided to convert our weaknesses into strengths… and believe me, if you have ever worked on any of your weaknesses for some considerable time, you will testify to the fact that it takes a lot of time with disproportionately small or miniscule results. So just for the sake of wishful thinking that we can completely overcome our weaknesses and even convert them into strengths (?), we expend so much energy… at times to the point of being frustrated.  By doing this, we lose precious time and energy – precious resources that should have been used in focusing on the positives within us and getting to the point of perfection.

So why are we speaking and doing so much to ‘work on weaknesses’.  Many business leaders I know have opined that working on weaknesses is not a great personal growth strategy. More can be achieved by getting more time and focus into what you are good at.

Pick up three to five things you are good at and make them to the point of being great! See the difference it makes in your life.

What are the odds that you and me, as hiring managers, will find our Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger?  .

For most of us in the corporate/human resources space, the formidable challenge is to get the star hired out of the lot of candidates out there, be it a CXO or a frontline sales foot soldier. This singular ability to identify and hire individuals, who can excel at work, and beat the market – the raison d’etre of any winning organization!

The trick is probably looking at the candidate’s core competence and also what he is passionate about, at work or otherwise. Picture this: If you were the guy in charge of hiring pilots for US Airlines, how would you have identified Capt Chesley Sullenberger from the whole lot of aspiring and young pilots? Or rather how would you not at any cost miss out on hiring the handful of Capt Sullenbergers from a thousand aspirants.

While there are surely many proven models on ‘how to hire the right person for the right job’, the most simple and cost effective way is to factor a few simple questions as a part of the hiring discussions.

In today’s rapid fire hiring processes, it is competency assessment on the basis of standard question templates that dominate rather than a few rudimentary but revealing questions.

One such rudimentary question is: What do you do in your spare time?

When Michael Balboni, New York State’s deputy secretary for public safety, thanked Capt Sullenberger for a job done brilliantly, he responded “That’s what we’re trained to do.” But that was humility at its best, another hallmark of passionate leaders.

Only a probing question on the Captain’s hobbies, life likes and passion would have revealed this:

When most friends were getting their driver’s licenses, he got his pilot’s license. For fun, he flew glider planes, which is what he did when he landed in the Hudson River with no engines. Extracurricular activity? An accident investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association and work with federal aviation officials to improve training and methods for evacuating aircraft in emergencies. This explains why he walked through the cabin twice, making sure no one was left behind before he escaped the sinking plane himself on that day over the Hudson river!

This might seem eccentric and obsessive to quote from what I read somewhere: “Obsessions are one of the greatest telltale signs of success. Understand a person’s obsessions and you will understand her natural motivation. That one thing for which she would walk to the end of the earth.”

Well, we are not hiring for those who would be willing to do that long walk, but only those whose probability of success on the job is above average, at least and excellent, at best.

So, look for that little obsession for job-related skills – a receptionist excels in greeting people with a smile, and has to like doing that and being hospitable, a sales guy needs to be passionate about people and how the product and services benefit the customer, a recruiter is passionate about helping people shape their careers, a doctor is passionate about saving lives.

To re-iterate, only the right and simple questions throw up our ‘Captain Sullenberger’!! Let’s ask those few questions now on.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

Cheerleaders are said to be a small crowd across the globe, and it makes them very special and unique for what they do – fly across continents to be at sports venues just to spread cheer, warmth, positive energy, smiles and laughter. So, wherever they cheer, they are an epitome of what all of us aspire to be… just plain happy within and outside.

The power of their presence is felt when you see them cheering the crowds – you and me included.  Does anything cheer you more, bring more joy, more vivacity during these matches than these cheerleaders? They dance and giggle through you TV screen irrespective of how the match is poised. Whichever team you and me may patronize in the game, we are all on one-side – the side of the cheerleaders……

These cheerleaders are not just bone and flesh, pretty and chic…. In each of them is a teacher, a nurse, a corporate executive, an airline hostess, a travel guide, an architect…but above all, they are cheer-leaders and their goal is to spread as much joy and cheer cutting across color, creed, and continents. This is the power of positive energy at its best.  If each one of us, above all we do in our lives, decides to imbibe cheerleading, this world will be a greater place than it is now.

Each of these cheer leaders have their own set of problems, they have overcome many hurdles in life than any of you and me, they have their successes, failures and setbacks, and in some cases even insurmountable tragedies.

BUT they are a determined lot – put all of their personal life aside, and be here and now, only to make you and me smile, laugh, feel happy, feel good, be a bundle of positive emotions.  Believe me, even the critics of these cheerleaders, get infected  with their joyful emotions. THAT is the power of spreading positive energy, smile, happiness, and joy. We all must imbibe a little bit of cheerleading in our daily schedule.

Amongst them, each of these cheerleaders invests so much of time and energy in staying and looking to be what they are…. Be it keeping their good and happy looks, an ever smiling disposition, a strong mind and body to take them across countries, and make a million and more spectators reciprocate the same positive energy and joy. I don’t think there could be any other small group akin to these wonderful cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are power packed positive emotions their best. They  are teamwork at its best. Each one of these cheerleaders is from a different place, nation, speaks a different language, has a unique set of life goals and career aspirations. But when it comes to their ‘here and now’ goal of cheering, they are the best team, move as one, dance as one, and smile and make you smile as one…a cohesive and close-knit team that performs only to accomplish the group’s goal to cheer. These are great management lessons in how teamwork ought to be.

Cheerleaders spread joy and happiness not to one sport…  They do the same for cricket, baseball, football and any other sport which would want to get them to cheer the crowd.  That is an example of a vision statement, irrespective of what is done… a vision to spread joy and cheer, and positive vibes for a huge audience.  So, here we learn the power of having a personal or corporate vision.

Let’s all benefit from a few good life lessons from these cheerleaders!

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

1.    Act with integrity; this is one quality that will make a great team.
2.    Credibility as a team-leader is mostly as good as only it is perceived. So display credibility and act with credibility.
3.    Walk the talk, you get judged well only when you walk the talk. Example: if you are asking for quality work, it’s a given that you also would do the same. Doing the other way destroys credibility.
4.    Be enthusiastic; encourage the team to be enthusiastic as well.
5.    Never hire in haste, which makes waste.
6.    Educate the team on who your customer is, who your competition is.
7.    Create a mechanism to know what is happening in competition.
8.    Let the team know that the customer is supreme, and he is your most important asset.
9.    Give no room for politics in your team. At the hint of it, stem it at the root; and exhibit the fact that politicking is a strict no-no.
10.    Communicate personally as often as possible; use the phone; only re-iterate in written communication.
11.    Smile and laugh in the team, work need not be serious as most of us would think it to be.
12.    Share the joy of any of your team-members.
13.    Share and partake in their sorrows. Give a helping hand, in whichever way you can when a need arises.
14.    Make the team workplace a fun place to be; again laugh and smile.
15.    Show the team member how happy you are to have him/her in the team.
16.    Celebrate each of your team-members birthdays, anniversary… pass on gifts voluntarily.
17.    Have a vision statement for the team; in line with the organization’s vision statement.
18.    Make the purpose of the team clear – it could be revenues, number of customers, turn around time, producing so many units… whatever.
19.    Let this purpose be written down and shared amongst all team members.
20.    Set individual goals clearly – leave no ambiguity in this – make it measurable for them as well as you.
21.    Clear state the expected quality of work, and quantity of work – on a day, for  a week, for the month, and for the year.
22.    Go out of your way to help a team member reach the stated goal.
23.    Make each of them feel that he/she can confide in you.
24.    Understand and talk to them of their job-goals and career goals.
25.    Make learning a team habit. Encourage learning in any form.
26.    Train the team in relevant and contemporary work skills.
27.    Build the team on the strength of his/her personal qualities.
28.    Don’t brood on their weaknesses. Or pass comments on them.
29.    Make them aware of the business opportunities and threats, and the way to remain in a position of advantage.
30.    Build a lot of fun around the goals..  make work interesting…..
31.    Celebrate small milestones, by any team member, and shower praises in public
32.    Celebrate and reward team ideas, which would bring in better results, fresh insights, and knowledge to all – and celebrate this each and every time.
33.    Discourage yes-men. If two people agreed on everything, then one of them is redundant.
34.    Show the team members a growth path – a path that would be intertwined with positive contribution.
35.    Reward excellence. Abhor mediocrity.
36.    Do not reprimand team members. Grown ups don’t need to be reprimanded; they only need to be counseled or advised.
37.    Allow people to make mistakes, which are the only way you get a learning team. Sans mistakes, no new things are going to happen.
38.    Make corrections well in time; not once in a blue moon. Once in a blue moon corrections upset the person, you and the team objectives.
39.    Evince interest in each individual; know them a little more than professionally – their family, their interests, passion, hobbies etc.
40.    Go for lunch once a week outside the office campus; this is by far the best way to bond.
41.    Get the families of teams together once a month. If the teams are cross location, make it at least once in a quarter.
42.    Be transparent and rational in all decision making.
43.    Be objective and not subjective in any of your deeds at work, and related to work.
44.    Make incentive plans objective, simple and clear. Complicated plans lead to a lack of uniform understanding across the team. This colors judgment, and defeats the team spirit.
45.    Take personal interest to ensure that all pay-out timelines are adhered to by the organization and the divisions.
46.    State clearly that a performer would have a soft corner, and would be rewarded.
47.    Reward performers often. And for the accomplishments.
48.    Keep team meetings brief, and with a stated objective and agenda.
49.    Do not meet formally without a written agenda circulated.
50.    Build in a surprise element in rewards for small wins – this could be internal or external to the organization – could be a new client acquired, a new proposal, a cost saving measure, a new idea, whatever…

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

The most important driving force of any successful and contended individual is his or her ‘vision statement’. And this statement can be made by the person at any point in life, by thinking and writing down what he/she thinks are important and priorities to life…on the personal front, family, work, friends and so on. On giving the values and priorities a considered thought, they shall be written down in the form of a ‘personal vision statement’ or ‘credo’.

Once this is done, this will be the beacon that will guide each and every action of the owner of the ‘vision statement’.

The time spent on making a ‘vision statement’ for yourself, will be worth more than its weight, not in gold, but the most expensive metal in the world. Just think of the fact that at every point and step in any facet of your life, you will be subconsciously guided by your ‘vision statement’ of which you and only YOU were the author.

Let me give a simple example of my own case. About a couple of years ago, on reading extensively about the value of personal written vision statements, I just spent about a day thinking of what my priorities in life would be, and what value systems would guide me on-course. Concluding the thought process, this was the ‘vision statement’ written down.

“…will be a successful man who will nurture his family with love and affection, provide them a better and comfortable future. He will embark on any step that will directly or indirectly contribute to this mission. He will live life with integrity, full of smiles, and radiate the same wherever and however he is. His career will be full of creative contribution to the positions he shall hold. He will become famous for his writings.”

Once I wrote this, and kept a few copies of it with me, I went through it time and again, probably for a few months. In hindsight, I can state emphatically that I have been guided by this ‘vision statement’ in all my deeds – be it at home, at the workplace, or anywhere and anything done, for that matter.

Think of what you want to do, what you want to accomplish, what will be your guiding values in each of your actions and steps…. And put down this, in the form of a concise vision statement.  This ‘vision statement’ can change and evolve, and be written and re-written time and again, by introspection.

Write your vision statement NOW. And see success and accomplishment in all you do…success and accomplishment as defined and set forth by you. Because that is what is your command to your mind, body and soul to act on consistently.

So today, and just now, please sit down and think of what should be your vision statement. Consult your parents, your spouse and kids if need be and make sure that you have a written vision statement before you retire for the day.

Make a few copies of your ‘vision’ statement, and leave it in places which you will see it often, may be 2 to 3 times a day. Carry a copy of that in your wallet. Make a public commitment – be it to your spouse, friends, and confidante about your vision.

The result of this easy and simple exercise will be there to see for the rest your life…and you/your family shall soak in nothing but accomplishments, happiness, satisfaction, success.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

This progress towards achievement of our goals is made easier by the power of imaging in the mind – once the image of the outcome is fed continuously to the mind, it is only a matter of time before the goal turns into reality. Imaging is the most potent tool of the mind, to achieve anything in life.

Here is a simple illustration of imaging in getting to goals. Just think of something which each one us had vividly visualized and it came to existence after sometime – in some cases just a few days, and sometimes after longer time – things like your parents being with you when you got that university topper gold medal, or getting wedded to a spouse who has the name you liked the most, or you became the head of your division. Actually, in a corner of your mind, that image kept lingering unconsciously, and it led to the outcome. In fact how fast the image came to be true in existence is directly linked to the intensity and power with which we had done the imaging exercise. For sure, all of us will have at least a couple of events or instances, wherein powerful imaging came into reality, without seemingly much effort.  That goes to show how powerful imaging can be, and just think of what we could aspire for if we chose to use imaging consciously in our desire to make it big.

Use the power of imaging in the mind in anything you want to do – visualize yourself as someone looking fit and 10 kgs lesser, commit the same to paper, and read the same about five times a day, and you will naturally act to do whatever is needed to look like that. This is just an easy example; your goal can be anything you always wanted.

It may seem complex and arduous but reaching goals is so simple when you passionately image and visualize the outcome of what you intend to achieve. This power of imaging combined with the power of having the goals as a written statement in your wallet, propels and catalyses your journey to achieving what you never could have thought possible.

Creating and recreating the winning images in the mind will seem tough only initially. But that comes with practice and exercise. As they say in any success literature, there an average of about 60000 thoughts per day that come into the mind. So the moment we write down about 10 or 20 life goals, and begin imaging the outcome in the mind, the mind is tutored and trained to focus on these goals. It gets into the subconscious mind, and moving or working towards achievement of the goals becomes a 24/7 process and the dynamics of action towards goals gets embedded in the subconscious mind.

These exercises of the mind make getting to goals great fun and easy too. The minute the mind is exercised and stretched it does not rest until the moment the image that is fed to it becomes a reality in life.

Good looks, great knowledge in any subject, getting into your dream company, becoming a CEO…be it anything, you become the CEO of your life by harnessing the power of imaging and getting to goals.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

While enough has been said and written on how it is important and crucial to manage performance in an organization, not much emphasis has been laid on the importance of communicating it to the members of the organization at all levels.

This leads to a lot of confusion, uncertainty, and most of all, shock and surprise when in the middle of the year/end of the year, the employees are measured, reviewed, and  evaluated by a process which they are not even prima facie aware of.

Many a times, such a performance management exercise, which is truly objective and equal to all gets perceived to be biased, and partial; the only culprit in this whole event is the absence of a well laid down communication strategy – within the organization to all internal stakeholders.

That strategy which will, well in time, at the beginning of the period or year under review, state in writing to each and every employee the measures and attributes by which his/her contribution will be done.

Lack of such communication will also have an adverse impact of the performing members of the team. Whilst they give in their best, which would have exceeded their division and business objectives, they would see that their not so performing peers also seem to hold the same stature and growth in a patriarchal management. This can be highly dangerous to the overall health and long term growth of the company. Unless people see a visible difference between where performers will stand – higher – and where non performers will stand – lower or out of the organization – the very performers will desert the organization.

Communication, in the right time and in a very transparent manner (with all the measures quantified, sans any scope for bias), will be a decisive differentiator that would enable all concerned to view the process as legitimate and objective. And once this happens, tremendous amount of discipline comes by in the way everyone views the short term and long term goals. And they also know how and where they will grow within, with the kind of work they do in the period under review.

This highlights the critical nature of the performance communication process, and the time and energy the HR team, the SBU heads, and the CEO ought to spend in making this exercise possibly the best communication amongst the employees. If there is one single exercise that would contribute directly to the top line and the bottom line of the organization, it is PERFORMANCE COMMUNICATION.

The best way to do this will be to create a sort of ‘war room’ that takes care of the whole communication process – planning, vetting, implementing at all levels top down, ascertaining feedback on whether everyone had understood their goals right through. And post the actual performance process, a check on whether what happened is as per the communiqué to each of the employee.

So let all of us, in our organizations do our bit for PERFORMANCE COMMUNICATION.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

If there is one quality that makes people win and achieve, it is not the amount of knowledge or being excellent in what you do, but it is just about the ability to persevere in the task on hand.

And why is it so difficult to persevere?

Because of the wandering mind. Read any success literature, and they will tell us that the human brain – that mass in the head which drives us in all of our actions and inactions – jumps at over 60000 thoughts a day. An uncontrolled and untamed mind is a wandering generalist. When we persevere, we make it a commander for a single purpose. You give the mind the reason and purpose in unambiguous terms, and then an image of the outcome; you make it the commander for a goal or a purpose.

Only by keeping this intensely active nature of the human mind, is it possible to accomplish success. And this is made possible by putting down the goals to paper, in black and white, with clear timelines and the outcome expected.

Unless you put down the most important needs and tasks in writing, the mind does wander. The minute you write down what is important to your personal and professional growth or life or work, the mind accepts the command at the subconscious level, and immediately drives you to persevere.

Perseverance, thus, is a quality that you can train the mind and body in by your own goal driven actions. By putting it down in writing, you are committing yourself to achieving whatever you want. Perseverance becomes a logical fallout of our need to get to the outcome desired.

Don’t miss the point…. gaining a new skill or improving on the job and climbing in the corporate ladder are all things that may not be such a huge challenge; the humongous challenge is to tune and drill the mind and body to persevere…and once done in a few small or big tasks, the ability to persevere gets embedded as a habit.

Link achieving the goal to pleasure and not doing the same to pain, maybe unbearable pain. When done so, Perseverance comes just naturally, and over a brief period of time, it becomes a winning habit. Most success literatures put this time frame for practice at 21 days.

Associate the ability to persevere or willingness to stay put on the task at hand to being in a pleasurable state of mind and body…and the opposite…not persevering or not focusing on the task as something that is unbearable pain

That moment there would be a paradigm shift in what the mind instructs the body to do. Persevere, experience immense pleasure and achieve goals.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

Think about this. This employer, whenever they decided to offer you the current position, clearly did that on the basis of your personal and professional credentials. In most cases, it could be even probable that you were offered the coveted position only a few months back. And when the employer did so, it was clearly on the basis of merit and merit alone. So, the pink slip was an occurrence owing to the global happenings that have had a cascading effect that has had a bearing on your organization too.

And whole bunches of your own colleagues and peers, and those in the professional fraternity have been affected. All of them are competent and capable in some way or the other. So are YOU. You were a clear choice for a said role and responsibility. You have been doing a good or even a fabulous job. You have contributed so much to the top-line and bottom-line, directly or indirectly. In the rush to manage changes in such times, most organizations seldom even communicate in this way… guess you need to take it in your stride and move on.

So, even remotely connecting the event – pink slip – to your capabilities will be doing gross injustice to you as a person. Never ever do that. (Just in case you are reading this as a fortunate not-pink-lipped, now you know what is to be told to your mind and heart.)

When you have not been responsible for the event, you only have to ACT now on what can be done to make things better. And steering clear of any negative thoughts and self pity gives you so much of positive energy and mind space to focus on what needs to be done now.

The future holds so much more than the present. You have all the knowledge and power to do whatever you choose personally and professionally. And for that just make sure that there are no energy leaks – from your mind and body.

You are even more capable now, with more time to do and plan your future. Choose that mindset and it will do all the good to you.

Look only for the positive. Shun the bad vibes, and all the negativity.

Thanks to the nature of our lives and work today, most of us are hooked to the internet, 24/7. This makes us sort of vulnerable to the news. The news spreads fasts. And bad news spreads even faster. And thanks to the fierce competition for viewer eyeballs and readership, television and the print media have a liking to cover news about jobs lost and pink slips.

If you are connected now, just Google for the words pink slip or job loss, and there you get all gloom and negativity right at your table; but what I suggest is precisely the opposite – resist the temptation to hunt for the bad news.

What the media does is to spread a sense of gloom all over. You can’t help much, as they are doing their job. But here is what you can do.

Don’t pay attention to any information that will feed to your sense of uncertainty.  You are capable, and all the more sure of what you want -  a great opportunity, a better way of living, all the positive energy possible, and a great mental make up to keep you happy when things seemingly are not at their best.

So, make it a point to read only information about growth plans, good things that are happening, which industries will do well, what areas you can re-skill yourself in, where inspirational, good speeches and well-being seminars are happening etc. That will make you feel good. And in turn you will be an ambassador of good news.

The unfortunate thing that happens in such times is that wherever you are – your desk at the office, cafeteria, or in the public transport – a vast majority of the discussions are only around what is going wrong. Seldom do most of us realize that all this talk of recession and slowdown spreads negativity all over. It is just not possible for you to focus on the good things of life, when what all you hear and see is not so good.

And that is the precise reason you need to discipline yourself only to be inclined to hear and see good news. Spread cheer. Talk more with your spouse and kids. Play with them. Teach you kid and ask him what happened at school today. See if your spouse needs any support at her work or in home-making. Abhor watching television – by doing that, in all probability you are catching what you avoid outside right at your drawing room!

You could connect more with your hobbies for which you seldom had time. Read books you like. Write to your friends and well-wishers, and those in your professional network. Attempt to connect with old friends and relatives. Connect with an NGO where you can be of some help.

Go ahead and do something that will make you feel good or make you a better person. As most personality gurus would say, like attracts like. Good attracts good. So, make it a point that you will attract only the good. Or one step ahead, ONLY THE BEST.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.

As large and branded players move ahead in the race for talent, by using compensation and benefits as a key acquisition tool, the challenge is indeed humongous for the midsized and smaller players in the sector.

Whichever organization be it, good leadership – organizational/team – by itself could be a sub-brand within the employer brand (or even for a perceived unbranded employer too). A cursory look at any recent best employer survey will throw light to this fact – amongst the top names would be a few organizations, which are shining stars not owing to the salaries they pay, but leadership, across the hierarchy. This is to prove the fact that ‘good leadership’ is indeed a brand by itself, dwarfing the organization’s brand.

Here are some very essential leadership qualities, not exhaustive, but critical and can go a long way in managers turning leaders, and facilitate in creation of the brand ‘leader’, for their employer.

Be a leader, not a manager

It is common belief that someone who is designated a manager, is a de-facto leader of the team or the organization. Or that is what at least most of us assume and tend to impose on teams and organizations. Such a belief is a sure shot to failure of the individual, and would have a cascading detrimental effect on the organization too!

Whatever be the designation, authority and respect is always bottoms up, and comes in when the team perceives the manager to be a leader, formally and informally as well. The leader’s positioning would need to be by virtue of his value add to the team, knowledge sharing, and a whole lot of intangibles.

While HR or the organizations spare no efforts in hiring the appropriate candidate to be a manager/leader, and proffering whatever training and retraining is needed, it is left to the hands of the manager-designate to prove his leadership skills. Managers just manage, with the systems and processes that are in place. But leaders make the team realize their strengths and weaknesses, and move their performance one up the ladder. Whilst a manager is just another step in the organizational hierarchy, a leader is a morale-booster for the team, and shall be someone who galvanizes the team to do more than what they do, and to the best of their abilities.

Leadership is all about a lot of effort in turning an ordinary team to one that can perform extra-ordinarily, by working on the strengths of the team/team members. To that effect, the leader possesses a quality to quickly identity and bring to the fore the strengths of the team. ‘Shower praises and maximize strengths and privately speak and work on overcoming weaknesses of team members’ is the best way to build and synergize the team.

Communicate effectively, and constantly create opportunities for dialogue

Thanks to the increasing proliferation of technology, the tendencies today are to send a formal mail to even someone in the next cubicle. And it is more in the case of managers who are not leaders. While sending formal communiqué could be at times a procedural need, the leader communicates goals, issues, problems or anything of relevance to the team in groups and one on one, as he deems fit. This would help the leader get a quick pulse of the team-feel, and also help in creating plans and strategies that have their ear to the ground. Just forwarding a mail, or sending a communiqué smack of authority, that may not have a team buy-in.

In a formal situation, only part of the team would get involved. Given the heterogeneity of today’s teams, informal modes make the team and organizational goals abundantly clear. Informal and individual approaches create and increase opportunities for divergent views and dialogues. Having a feel of the divergent views is quintessential to give clarity what the goals are and how they are going to be achieved by all in the team.

Moreover, an informal style keeps the lines of communication open, making team members feel free to voice their opinions. In most cases, this leads to better translation of strategies into operation and immunizes the leader and the organization from major operational goof-ups, which would prove dear from the cost and strategic perspective.

Be a great mentor and be dependable

In the times, when aspiration levels are high, a mentor is the most sought after person in any professional situation. This makes it a fundamental prerequisite for the manager, to be a mentor to the team, if he seeks to morph as a leader.

In fact, now the trend in most companies is to facilitate the new employee with a mentor, to take care of the emotional needs during the vagaries of induction into the organization and post that.

The leader becomes a mentor to every team member, and proactively advises the team mate on a host of professional and personal situations. That means, the leader should be the most approachable to all the team mates, and breaks the shackles of hierarchy with the team. Only this assures the comfort level, and makes each of the team members to open up.

To be a mentor, it is also very crucial for the leader to be a great listener, to the stated, and someone who can see the obvious, even if not expressed by the team member. Once the leader perceives the obvious, he needs to initiate a dialogue and make the team member open up. It is also very important to position oneself as someone who is dependable – dependable in all situations. This calls for a great level of perceived level-headedness, and consistency in positive behavior. ‘Perceived’ is the key word, as perception is bigger than reality as far as the team members go.

Effective mentoring is indeed a good way to control attrition, as in most cases employee exits are owing to reasons unstated and unseen – owing to a lack of opportunity to open up at the appropriate juncture.

Be ready to give credit and also take the beating

Most organizations today, are replete with stories of managers or bosses who take the heat on the team, at the slightest hint of trouble. And even worse, take all the credit for anything that happened good as a team. This is the last and most questionable behavior that plummets the team morale. In some cases, attrition is due to this, with a well performing team member, leaving the organization, tired of this managerial quality.

A leader should be readily willing to give credit and appreciation to anything good that is a consequence of team performance. In most cases, a good leader is one who seldom speaks of what he did, and speaks more of what each team member, or the team as a whole contributed. This is seen to be the most powerful intangible motivator – each team member is constantly in a quest for a need to be seen achieving and contributing. And when this is commended, however insignificant be the contribution, the individual gets pushed to the next higher level of performance, with very little managerial intervention.

Even more important is handling the issue of taking the beating in case of any problems. The leader should be the first to volunteer and own responsibility for whatever did not work for the team. This immunizes the team from any demotivating reprimand. Once the heat of the situation is tided over, the leader should sit with the team/members of the team and work on course corrections and provoke them to introspect. This will propel the team to voluntary action, which needs to be catalyzed by the manager.

Inspire and set an example

Above all, the paramount quality of a leader is to inspire his team by the quality of work, towards organizational goals. The walk and talk of the leader, shall motivate, inspire, and move the team to a higher platform of performance.

In most cases, and if the team feels the need, the leader works with individual team members to work on the performance gaps, and complement and supplement the efforts in accomplishing the work objectives. By doing this, the leader also provides critical on-the-job training to the team that scales up their performance when such situations recur.

Leadership of teams is all about going an extra mile to galvanize the team to over-achieve the stated goals of the team/organization.

All the best for each one of us to be a brand ‘LEADER’.

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Muralidharan is an HR practitioner and a recruitment professional. A strong believer in spreading cheer and positivity, Murali currently works out of Chennai and is a voracious reader and a prolific writer.