People Matter

Dealing with criticism positively is an important life skill. There will be moments in life when you will be criticised. The impact and effect depends on your reaction to it. You can improve by taking the criticism in your stride, look at it with positivity and make changes to improve. Or you may want to sulk, stress, beat yourself up by taking the criticism negatively and thus lower your self esteem or become agitated. Most times your reaction is based on the type of criticism - if its constructive or destructive. It is important you understand to identify between the two. They way you handle them determines your next steps.

Leading Teams with Empathy For many years, Leadership has been about aggression, fear, authoritative who dictates and drives output and results. Well, times have changed - and one cannot demand respect. We must now lead teams with empathy and kindness. A person leading with empathy is sensitive to overworked employees, interested in their lives, willing to help with their problems, and compassionate when they share their troubles. If you become such a leader, you will communicate with your employees better and forge long-lasting relationships with them. Empathy encourages leaders to understand the root cause behind poor performance. Being empathetic allows leaders to help struggling employees improve and excel. Empathy allows leaders to build and develop relationships with those they lead. Empathetic leaders feel genuine concern for others and are intrinsically motivated to help them thrive. While empathy is important at all times. If people don’t feel you care about them when the chips are down, they’ll know you don’t care any other time. Empathy is an experience, that one imagines oneself to be in and thus understands the other persons experience. To Lead with empathy we need to; Be better listeners to understand spoken & unspoken concerns Show humility & self awareness Invest in building relationships Set Expectations & give feedback Build a culture of empathy When we listen to understand, spread optimism, nurture hope, encourage an environment of belonging and humanise ourselves we will grow our organization into a place where employees can – and want to – do their best work. Let us lead with love and care and build organisations of happy people passionately delivering enriching outcomes.

You want your team to enjoy their time in the organisation? A few basic things need to be taken care for Retaining Employees Stability and growth are key factors that inspire people to wake up every morning and dress up for work. Stability is a combination of several pertinent assurances like 1) Culture of the organisation 2) Enjoying what one does 3) Work-life balance 4) job security 5) timely payments Basically, a work place that is devoid of fears of any kind. On the other hand, Growth is just not lifestyle but also an appreciation of ones hard work, experience and learning over the years. Most times, organisations have chalked out their short term and long term growth plans, however miss to align it with the growth of its team. When an organisation has a clear roadmap carved out for the individuals in the team, not only would they look forward to achieving them but also are deeply invested in it. Career and growth planning of individuals along with the company’s strategic growth plan ensures that the organisation works like a well oiled, focused and dedicated unit with individual interests, invested in the big idea and motivated to achieve the strategic goal. Leaders and Human Resource enablers investing time in building careers of their teams and helping them grow are most successful and such organisations are Happy Work Places. Understand, achieving targets is only a job done, making men out of lads is an accomplishment.

Organisation culture is defined by how one enables its Human Resource to perform better. Human beings are anatomically similar and related to the great apes but are distinguished by a more highly developed brain and a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning. Thus, it is imperative to understand that we do not have to manage human resources but enable them. We are in a world of Human Resource Enablement. The process of enabling humans to perform the best begins from the time they walk in for an interview - Right from the aroma of the workplace or office, to offering water and helping them relax, thanking them for coming and excitedly talking about the vision of the organisation and subsequently the need for the role you are interviewing for before you start asking questions. Enabling your people with the culture that encourages team work, commitment and passion coupled with resources like automation, analytics and training not only helps increase productivity but also plays an extremely significant role in retaining your teams. As a Human Resource Enabler one needs to drive top-down the importance of creating workspaces that smells good or is aromatic which in turn helps in calming the mind, increasing productivity, relaxes the environment and helps think creatively. Remember to pick up the right scent. Talk to your teams regularly and check on how you could enable them to perform better, effectively & efficiently. Train them on soft skills, especially on emotional intelligence to make your organisation - a place that cares! And once you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of your business. So, dear enablers - smell your coffee and empower your teams.

This podcast is to share experiences and insight to making Happy Work Places a possibility. Will be hosting 2 episodes a week to start and allow Leaders, HR and organisations to assimilate, reflect and implement if needed over the week. Looking forward to your comments to make this show better and useful