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How do you describe the concept of workplace emotions and how far it affects your professional and career growth?
NM Human instinct eludes the personality recognizing attributes, including the temperament, feelings and carrying on that is very common and autonomous to the impact of culture. Despite these, what causes them and how settled human instinct is, are among the established and required robust inquiries. Human instinct may not be easily discernible or may be predicted with assumptions, the issue of human instinct in the display is the objective of culture. The mere comprehension of human instinct by each individual can be its legitimate objective.
All associations are liable to strive and rivalry between their want and interests of various divisions, groups, and people. Authoritative politics is the procedure through which interests are played out and accommodated ultimately. While in a perfect association, it might be trusted that choices are made on a reasonable premise. In spite of the fact that it isn't something that individuals will dependably concede, authoritative political issues assume a vast part of the way in which most organizations function. Individuals are political creatures, and it is difficult to hinder the political issues entering any workplace. This isn't totally a negative approach, as it isn't conceivable to utilize the political intentions of employees and others in an association to achieve more extensive objectives and to build an association's proficiency.
The negative authoritative political issue might be exceptionally ruinous for an organization or a group. This is indeed a huge source of stress among employees and their family members. Contrary to this, political issues incorporate the utilization of subversive strategies to advance an individual plan which commonly contrasts with hierarchical organizational structure. It diverts vitality far from authoritative objectives and trades off the enthusiasm of collaboration and satisfaction of other employees. Such strategies may incorporate separating or bending of data, non - collaboration, distributing fault, retaliation, contemptibility, obstructionism, and other dangers.
Managing these issues is now-a-days very crucial for any profession. Organizational politics is not always bad as it is often used by the managers to get the things done in a smarter manner. This strategy is often misinterpreted as organizational politics. When you are dissatisfied or hurt, it is obviously difficult for you to maintain professional attitude towards work, which leads to the dangerous negative impact on your career growth.
In reality is it possible to control your emotions all the time when you know you are spending more time at your workplace than your home?
NM We are often found suffering with two forms of emotions i.e. surface acting and deep acting. The best example of surface acting is an air hostess who always greets people with a smiling face irrespective of the feelings, problems, emotions or stress in his/her mind. Majority of us don't even greet them back and few of us don't even look at them; nevertheless, they maintain their politeness and smile while greeting us.
Next, I strongly think that HR would be the best example of deep acting emotion. Most of the time, I've witnessed outsiders confessing that HR is a thankless job. Yes, it is so because there are many reasons an HR gets misunderstood. The professionalism that this job demands is indeed critical to explain in words. Unfortunately, the employees hired by an HR are the ones who keep spreading ill rumours and hatred against the HR.
Issues like conflicts, non - performance, misbehaviours are never addressed by the head of the department as they want to protect themselves and their image in front of the employees, and it is forwarded to HR. HR many times know the deep - rooted issues within the department but, trying to solve them makes him the villain of the story. A good HR will never speak with employees that why, how, by whom the decision has been taken.
We should never forget that the word "Success" demands hard work, determination, loyalty and ethics from us. We spend more time in organization than we do with our family and naturally, we will have emotional attachment too. But those are professional emotions targeted towards the common goal called - success. Controlling emotion every time is impossible, I would say "NO" to even putting efforts in doing so as emotions are an obvious trait of human psychology. I would suggest that if you love your work; control the outburst of your emotion to maintain equilibrium between emotion and profession.
In today's work world where multi-generation workforce is working together, what approach would be best suited for emotion management, since all these generations have different expectations and varied thought process?
NM Changing old minds is very difficult in any organization. Be it an educational institute or a manufacturing industry, each employee has adapted his own style of working with very less flexibility to change or to accept the changes. This fact serves as a supporting element to the omnipresent difference of opinions at work place. Nevertheless, we cannot solely deny the fact that the role of their experiences and knowledge is substantial in the overall growth and performance of the organization.
Being in HR field for many years, I have concluded that changing them individually or counselling them individually is quite difficult. However, the show must go on! My target is to get the best performance out of each employee and also to serve them with the most suitable and amiable working environment where, nobody is hurt or disrespected. So, I condemned the rule to get the things done with all levels of employees together as team and made up my own rule i.e. 50-30-20 generation mix ratio; that includes 50% fresh blood, 30% middle-aged employees and 20% highly experienced ones. Later, as a department they will have to work in team with no option left out. This makes them prone to changing themselves for the betterment and adapting the most suitable working pattern. Believe me, this strategy works really well, if monitored wisely.
What is the role of HR in creating an environment for maintaining an emotional balance at the workplace?
NM I have seen many people who are brilliant in IQ, but they lost the war and won the battle due to lack of EQ. Success in life is a blend of determination, sacrifice, managing ego, controlling emotions, managing social life, discipline, people management and many such trivial things that often go unnoticed. You must be good in this combo pack, so as to increase your market value. EQ is equally important as IQ since it helps in building professional symbiotic relationship and getting things done in faster way.
Teaching EQ is indeed a difficult task, especially when people are rigid towards acceptance. I have my own ways of keeping the work environment healthy. I ensure that my employees have enough work to spend their time in productivity, instead of social gossip. I choose to give them the platform for the discussing the topic of their interest, irrespective of their areas of work. With this, they seek an opportunity to collaborate with other departments and understand the differences and similarities they share. I believe, we must encourage their creativity and innovation, no matter how trivial or unproductive it is! Afterall, today's small step can be tomorrow's big leap!
Relaxing your employees at certain point of time is also crucial. EQ is very simple - we just have to understand one short slogan : "Never spoil your relationship."
How do you see the leadership styles evolve to cater to the emotional needs of the employees? Which leadership style would work best in today's times?
NM Effective leadership is a well - knitted fusion of vision, mission, coaching, mentoring, clarity, behaviour, democracy, dedication, high emotional quotient, team building, ethics and integrity. All these elements, when blended properly, and in appropriate ratio shall result in a wonderful leader. Anything extra or less in this composition shall lead to a fussy leadership trait. However, none of them will be effective every time, as it should be used based on the situation and the person to whom one has to deal with.
In present scenario, where the competition is budding at an accelerated pace, one can witness an increase in office politics and at the same time, the number of non - performers are also increasing rapidly. Every time it is not advisable to fire the non - performers, rather they need to be driven towards self - improvement. It is the sole duty of the leader to take wise actions in this drift.
Today's demand for leadership is something different and practical. An ideal leader is one who is a down-to-earth person, can understand the value of people and mission of organization, with good managerial skills, masters the tricks and hacks of all the managerial aspects and who can take the team along with her/him without hurting anyone by being unbiased. S/he should be able to lead a team that works for the common goal of any organization.
While emotion is a very human concept, do you think technology does have a role to play in creating effective emotional management practices at workplace?
NM Environmental physiology and reproductive ecology continue to mark their influence on human biological functioning. Broadly speaking, environment has interactions among its physical, biotic, and social aspects and some theoretical basis, drawing on evolutionary ecology and background, changing constraints and opportunities. Now, the human body gains more from the interaction with different areas/fields and at the same time, it contributes towards the same. Exchange of ideas is today, the key to building a sustainable approach. Technology too has an impact on human emotions. The social media and mobiles, on the other hand, have changed the way in we think and communicate.
Tell us an incident which required you to exercise great control over your emotions while at workplace and your learning from it?
NM I think HR is the department, where you are supposed to use EQ at every step and control your feelings tremendously. Basically, the sad part I find in my whole work is the process of layoff, which I think for every HR, is disturbing. Every time I do layoff, I learn a lot. However, how to get rid of this pain became a question for me.
Then I learnt one more thing that people themselves are responsible for their success and failure. We all are grown up and educated, then why don't we understand the simple fact that we are hired for our brains and till the time we are utilizing our brains and performing well, we are in gold books. Though, one must learn that there is very thin line between responsibilities and performance. When it is about career then we have to make sure that our profile should be upgraded, which demands lot of hard work. I learnt how to control my emotions during layoffs. I personally make sure to use EQ and proper counselling while laying off employee. Managing layoff is like playing with the mind of person without knowing what is going on in his mind.
Fortunately, I never had a chance to witness any bitter experiences earlier. But recently, when an employee, who addresses me as his mentor, lost his track, I felt really bad. His ego made him blind towards judging the correct thing at that moment and he became furious. His violence was difficult to handle and unfortunately, I couldn't pull him back to the correct path.
I have learnt one thing from this incident that whatever may be the case or feeling, you have to be just hard core professional in your decision.
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