Being in control of the dialogue while compromising, actively listening, and showing respect to those with whom we interact If someone asked me – “What is the most important skill in any productive and effective dialogue?” without any hesitation I would say “Diplomacy.” So, why is diplomacy is so important for an effective dialogue and why it is not being used as often as it needs to be in important conversations and negotiations that many of us participate in on the regular basis. Unfortunately, there’s not one good answer to this question, however, one thing that stands out to me what I am thinking about diplomacy is people’s desire to be right in order to satisfy our own egos and feel good even if conversation takes a negative/unproductive turn. We want to be and feel right even when we are wrong. Why? Because, the illusion of being right helps to boost our ego and allows us to feel good about ourselves and our actions. But, what we often forget to consider is how other people feel about our words and our actions. We miss a critical part of the bigger picture, and that is that dialogue can never be effective without mutual respect, understanding, and often compromise. Compromise is a very important component of any diplomatic negotiation. Without compromise and genuine respect for another party in the dialogue, it is your opinion vs. someone else’s where both sides walk away from conversation with high boosted ego but in disagreement. So, what exactly are we accomplishing by being right at the expense of another person’s defeat, walking away from conversation with feeling of bitterness? We accomplish absolutely nothing in such situation, all we are doing is damaging our relationship with another person or group. So, the issue remains unresolved and once positive relationship is now damaged. Does anyone win in such situation? Of course, the answer is ‘no.’ Therefore, being diplomatic, by listening vs. arguing, being respectful of another person’s or group’s point of view and perspective, be willing to compromise, considering all sides of the dialogue is very important in having a positive, effective, and mutually beneficial conversation, dialogue and overall engagement. Remember, these points next time you engage in any conversation. Remember to be diplomatic vs. allowing your ego to only focus on your own thoughts and opinions. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
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Don't let time slip away, make time to appreciate, recharge and reflect every day Have you ever stopped and think about the beautiful world around us? Have you taken a break recently in your extremely busy schedule to look around and appreciate the nature around you? If you are surrounded by building without a single tree in sight, have you admired beautiful and unique buildings around you, the unique and astonishing architecture? If you live near the ocean, when was the last time you went to the beach and just peacefully sat on the sand admiring the beautiful and magnificent ocean, and its powerful waves? I know it’s a lot of questions that I ask for you to answer, but they are all centered around one thing – the importance of appreciation of the world and beautiful nature, surroundings, and people around us. Now, you may say that “I don’t have time in my busy and hectic schedule to pause and just enjoy peaceful nature around me.” However, if you are working in the office all day, have you taken just few minutes throughout your day to spend outside, perhaps eating lunch or grabbing a cup of coffee, leaving office environment for a period of time? If the answer is no, that perhaps you need to analyze your daily schedule and look for opportunities to optimize your work, meetings, projects that you are working on, so that you may be able to take just few minutes to step outside of your office and enjoy the beautiful day. Look, I know it’s easier said than done, but if we do not create such experience for ourselves, we will continue being consumed by our busy lives without allowing ourselves to simply pause, reflect, think, and fill ourselves with the positive energy of nature. I am sure many would agree that we often get so busy with our daily tasks, problems, issues, concerns, projects, work, etc., that we allow it to consume us completely day after day, and when we eventually find a minute or two to stop and look around, we notice that things have changed, our surroundings have changed. I often hear people saying – “I don’t know where time went, but I didn’t even notice how quickly summer went by and next season came.” That’s a great example of us being so busy that we don’t even notice time passing us by, seasons changing, our surroundings changing, even people around us changing, while we are working very hard to create a better future for ourselves and those that we love. Why not try to combine hard work with some time for ourselves to pause and interact with our surroundings and people around us? Why not take just few minutes each day to appreciate our present? If you can substitute driving your child to school with walking, not only will you enjoy the company of your child, learn more about what he or she are passionate about, but also spend just few minutes surrounded by nature, even if your route consist of walking through busy streets and buildings, you are still interacting with world and people around you vs. the interior of your car. I hope that this brief article added some inspiration to your busy life, and motivated you to find ways to spend just few minutes each day enjoying beautiful world and people around you, helping you to re-charge and fill yourself with positive energy for the entire day, and making it a little easier to deal with and overcome challenges and difficulties that we all face in our busy lives. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
Common mistake many of us make when performing specific tasks repeatedly in a consistent manner and expecting a different result If things are not going according to set and expected plan, or you are receiving the same repetitive result, different from what you were expecting on the repetitive basis, then something must change. What you don’t want is keep on repeating a specific process or action repeatedly without introducing any changes or modification within that process and expecting a different result. Why is this important to remember with everything that we do in our professional and personal lives? Because, most people do not want to be stuck in continuous, never-ending loop or actions that lead to zero results, unless our goal is to actually deliver zero results. But I personally do not know any situations where this may be an objective. Therefore, let’s focus on finding ways to break out of continuous cycle and create new ways of doing in order to begin adding value to everything we do and creating more effective and often times efficient processes which help us to make progress in activities that we do daily at home and in the place of business. How do you do that? How can one break the repetitive cycle of ‘zero progress’ and explore new possibilities and become the creator of change? First, I would begin with analyzing a specific process that you are working on or responsible for managing and leading. More specifically, think about each step that you take in that process and capture it on paper or on the computer. Then, think about steps and actions captured as part of the process flow and ask yourself a very important question – “Is there an opportunity to make improvements or change specific steps in the process flow to make it more efficient, effective, and create a change for a better?” But, please remember, if you are not seeing results that you hope to see, or you are not receiving results as quickly and effectively as you would like, then the answer here is obvious – typically there’s always an opportunity to improve, enhance, and be creative. If you not sure where to start, or if you do not see where opportunity for improvement may be, why aren’t you ask your peers, colleagues, family members, friends, or your customers. Who would know what needs to change or improve better than people who are purchasing and using your product or service? The answer here is obvious – no one, because, your customers are eager to share with you what you may want to change in your daily business processes and ways of doing things, all you need to do is ask them for help. I know this can be very uncomfortable process at first, because, you perhaps do not want to give others an impression that you need help, however, if you cannot find the best solution on your own, why not be open and seek feedback and help from those who are ready and willing to share it with you? This works the same way when we are faced with roadblocks and challenges in our personal lives. You’ve been doing the same thing over and over with minimal to no result, so why not ask your family members or your friends for their input, their ideas, and feedback. Perhaps, the solution may be right in front of us, but we cannot see it because it simply takes another person to point us to it. I’ve dealt with so many situations where solution to a problem that I was looking to solve was right in front of me, but I did not see it, because, I was busy with routine and repetitive tasks and simply did not have time to pause and analyze as I should have. As result I’ve wasted a lot of precious time running in the circle vs. creating new ways of performing a particular task. So, next time when you are stuck in the process that does not yield expected results or results and rewards you were hoping to receive, pause and analyze each of your steps within a specific process and outlined above and look for creative ways in improving or enhancing the process, and most importantly, don’t feel like you must do this on your own. Remember to ask for help when appropriate, because, help may be waiting just around the corner, but our ego may be preventing us from reaching for it. Often, our own ego can be our own worst enemy, so keep it in check and begin creating change in your professional and personal lives when it’s needed most. Life is a rollercoaster full of ups and downs, twists and turns Our entire life is a composition of different, often unpredictable events, both good and bad, that we experience and live through all throughout our lives. Why good and bad? Because, as you had probably already noticed or experienced for yourself, life is like a rollercoaster, it’s not only going up where we experience positive and happy moments in our lives, it also often takes alternative route or turn, or in many cases rollercoaster goes down. Unfortunately, when it goes down it’s not the same feeling you when you are speeding downward on a rollercoaster, instead, you experience and go through some tough and challenging times in life. That is why we should always remember the concept of rollercoaster and how it travels along the track – going up, making slow and sharp turns, as well as going down very fast without notice or an opportunity to prepare. This is exactly how life works, it goes up, takes turns for which we often not prepared, and in many cases, it takes us through paths full of challenges, problems, and disappointments. Why is it important to know and remember? Because, life often takes such unpredictable turns and twists for which we may not be ready or can prepare for. Instead, we are faced with situations in front of us – good or bad – and we must overcome them no matter what. It’s easy to accept good and positive changes, but it’s not so easy and simple to accept and face difficult situations when we are faced with one. However, if we know and accept that life can and will take turns which we may not expect, like, or welcome, we won’t be completely caught off guard and be ready to face specific difficulties and/or challenges vs. running and hiding away from them. Many people choose to ignore points mentioned earlier and instead choose to pretend that their life can and will only go up, completely denying that there’s even a slight chance that things may change, and life can take an unexpected turn for which they are not prepared or be presented with unforeseen difficulties and challenges. Even when by observing someone else dealing with a specific life’s challenge at work, at home, business or personal, they are convinced that they could never face similar situation in their own life, until life takes a turn and presents its not so positive and unpredictable side. Then we realize that we should never say ‘never,’ because regardless where we may be in life today, how much or how little money we may have, employed or unemployed we are, run our own business or work for someone else, life may present us with its challenges and its rewards alike, and we should always be aware and ready for such possibilities. So, don’t get discouraged if you are going through challenging time in your life at this time, life is a rollercoaster, so what you are experiencing and dealing with today, may not be what you are experiencing tomorrow or day after. Be ready, be aware, and never, ever lose hope in good and determination to succeed in life. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
How to enjoy and have fun during an interview process If you ever looked for a job, you had most likely gone through at least one if not more job interviews. To most people job interview is the experience that they are not comfortable talking about unless the experience was positive and resulted in them receiving a job offer. However, in most cases people interviews as very difficult, uncomfortable, and scary experience. Why is that the case? Why many of us view interviews a frightening experience and not something to look forward to? Shouldn’t interview experience be fun and interesting while maintaining its level of necessary complexity and challenge? You are probably thinking – How is that possible? How can interview experience be possibly fun? Well, based on my personal experience and having to go through many interviews myself as well as conducting them, I believe that interviews can be very interesting, challenging, and fun. However, in order for us to begin viewing interviews in a such way, we must take necessary and I would go even further to say required steps to prepare, in order to create an experience that we would enjoy vs. run away from. What steps we can and should strongly consider taking to prepare for an effective job interview? Step 1 – Do your research about the company for which you are interviewing. What is important to the company in question and why it matters? How can anyone expect to do well on the job interview if they don’t have a very good understanding about the company? This should be the very first item on your research To Do List. Easiest way to conduct your research is online, and typically the best place to start is which company’s website. Things that you should be looking for are: · Company’s mission · Vision · Goals and Objectives · Product and Services · Financial objectives and historical business performance · Future business aspirations · Social responsibility goals and contributions This is certainly not an all-inclusive list of things to look for and have a very good understanding of company’s operations, but it is a good basic foundation of the business before proceeding to the next step in the interview preparation process. Step 2 – Answering a very important question – What’s In It For Them? In other words, why should they hire you vs. many other candidates for the same role? This is not just about your personal qualities, skills, abilities, or previous experience, it’s about you helping to solve a particular problem that this company may be looking to solve or finding a way to improve or enhance an existing business process which focus on operational efficiency, innovation, and revenue. Of course, you would not know business goals and objectives unless you do a very thorough research outlined in step 1. Therefore, it’s important to come with some ideas and specific proposals to show interviewer that you’ve done your research of their business and have ideas and/or recommendations on how to help the business to achieve specific goals and objectives. To go even further, it’s good to have an idea of what you may do in the first 30 to 90 days to help moving the business forward, if hired, while always keeping in mind things that are important to a business and how you can help. Step 3 – Knowing enough about the company in order to ask good questions during and after the interview. If/when you come to an interview and do not have at least 2-3 good questions to ask interviewer at the end of the interview, this could be a signal to the interviewer that you are unprepared, or that you are not really interested in their business. I don’t mean a typical question such as: “When should I expect to hear from you?” or “What is the next step in the interview process?”, I mean specific question related to company’s goals, objectives, new initiatives, or products and/or services. This is your opportunity to create engagement and learn more about the business from a representative of the company. You may not have an opportunity to ask more than 1-2 questions or interviewer may not give you an opportunity to ask any questions, but it’s always good to come prepared. Step 4 – Pay very close attention to the questions you are being asked during an interview. Don’t think about the question you may be asked next, instead be present, listen carefully, do not interrupt interviewer, understand the question before responding. Some of us can be so nervous during an interview that instead of focusing on a person in persons in front of us and questions that are being asked, we are thinking more about what question may be coming next, missing entire interview experience and allowing our mind to wonder somewhere else vs. being focused on the present and on the questions asked. You want to be present in the conversation at all times and add value to the interaction and dialogue vs. being an ‘answering machine.’ How many of us like to speak to an ‘answering machine?’ I would guess, not many. Right? Step 5 – It’s good to have at least one good example for each of your answers. We may have provided the answer to the immediate question asked, but do we really know what we are talking about? That may be the question that interviewer is thinking about in their mind after receiving an answer to their initial question. Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable and confident with the answer received if that answer was followed up with a quick and concise example, perhaps from your own personal example or an example of someone you may know? I would. Now, you may not always be able to provide an example or sharing an example may not be appropriate after a specific question & answer, this is where observing interviewer’s non-verbal language becomes very important. For example, are they leaning in towards you, possibly wanting to know more or leaning back on their chair likely displaying satisfaction with the answer received. Do you observe a questioning facial expression of the interviewer after providing your answer, or is interviewer nodding in agreement and understanding? These are just some of the non-verbal cues that we want to pay attention to during an interview, and that is why it is very important to pay close attention to the person in front of you and their verbal and non-verbal cues, as highlighted in step 4. Step 6 – Dress for success and arrive to your interview early. You never know what surprises you may run into on your way to an interview, such as: traffic, car troubles, etc., or parking difficulties upon arriving. You definitely to not want to be late to your interview, that is why it’s good to give yourself plenty of time for “what if” situations you may encounter. Dress code is a very important part of an interview process. Even if someone told you that it is acceptable to show up to an interview wearing casual clothes, it’s best to be safe than sorry and take it to the next level and wear business casual at a minimum. If the expectation is business casual, I would take it to the next level and wear a suit. Why? Because, you want to feel comfortable and confident during an interview, knowing tat your dress code is not just meeting but exceeding expectations, and you can focus your attention on the questions asked during an interview vs. worrying if wearing shorts was ok. Understanding and use of six steps discussed earlier is what I believe creates an enjoyable and fun interview experience both for the person being interviewed and the interviewer. When you are prepared and confident in your answers there should be nothing short of enjoyable and interesting interview dialogue for all involved. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
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