Frailty thy name is ....

I know I have posted my last blog topic but I have had an incident in the last couple of days which I think reflects the weakness in the leader that I am and I would like to share this with all. Hopefully this should help others in learning from my experience. I have come to realize that I am oversensitive to certain aspects of my life. This exposes my weakness and shows how frail I can be. Unfortunately this does not complement a leader who is supposed to take control of a situation especially in times of crisis.

Shockingly I have been unaware of this over sensitive nature of mine since I am not sensitive to every aspect of my life, nonetheless the few aspects that I am sensitive to brings forth a person who is vulnerable to emotional imbalance and outbursts. Where I should be in control of the situation I have had it back fire so I am completely at a disadvantage. I am in a situation where I am being blamed for someone else's mistake simple because my defenses are down. I have realized that by showing I am extra sensitive to certain aspects of my life helps others take advantage of me during a time my defenses are absolutely weak and I am unable to take a stand for myself.

After a lot of thought I have realized that a poker face in front of others helps us handle a situation better and does not help people pick up on what ticks us off. This will help us handle any crisis as a leader better.

The final blog - thoughts on Leadership as a course

One thing I have learnt from the activities and discussions in the leadership class is that emotional balance is a quality I have to cultivate to better my leadership skills!!! This is the key lesson and I am hoping to make amends towards being a better leader.

I have been toying with the idea of a change in career for a while and the personal encoding activity helped me realize a dream that can come true if I wanted. I did extremely well in the activity and this showed that I do enjoy emoting and communicating and being in a different person's shoes. I am a professional dancer but this has taken a back seat due to my engineering career. However if a change of industry was an idea to consider then I realized that dance and dramatics is something I am interested in and might excel at with adequate effort. This is a revelation and a help towards a dream that is yet to be realized.

I positively feel that the reader our group chose was the best applicable to my leadership goals especially towards maintaining a more balanced emotional exterior. I have to use the stop sign rule for a more peaceful existence in both personal and professional life. Given the fact that my personal life is going through major changes, I need to be constantly using the stop sign rule else I might ruin my relationship with my family members.

Finally I must say that my feedback from the external questionnaire continues to pleasantly surprise me because I realized that others have a better perception of my skills. It has been a confidence booster and will continue to help me grow.

A class in Review (the last blog topic)

The activity that I have reflected back on the most was the Blind Square, how we did it and how it could have been done better. As I had done the activity with Dr. Wells, I was disapointed that I could not have been more successful in Leadership with this activity. Another activity that was very instructional was the concept of acting out different emotions from Dr. Suess words. How I express emotion and what emotion I attach to happenings at work good or bad, is something I which I can improve.

What I remember most from the Book Presentations was the idea of summarizing your life in one sentence, what would that be. I find that sentence easier to define than a personal mission statement like the reader discusses. My one sentence also helped define the 2-3 concrete goals that I have toward improving Leadership skills, my work experience and my entire life. That idea has been very helpful, yet I don't remember the book it came from. The other book topic that was instructive was "Predicably Irrational" which really helps define some of the seemingly nonsensical things people feel to be true.

If I was going to suggest a book it would be "Good to Great" and though it's older, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effecient People."

Micromanagement and Leadership - please let me know your thoughts

Micromanagement is anti leadership in my opinion. I seem to be dealing with micromanagers at various levels in my persona an professional life everyday and having a hard time making peace with it. I have also observed that people's productivity and overall stress management is low when dealing with micromanagers. Someone in a website says "Paranoid incompetent micromanagers (PIMM), who successfully combine tight control of minute details/procedures used in performing assignments with compete incompetence are often called "control freaks" (CF). This category of micromanagers represents really nasty beasts of IT jungles who tend to completely paralyze their victims."

Although, I do not completely agree with the above quote that micromanagement is synonym with incompetent managers, I do agree that micro managers are termed otherwise as control freaks.

Projects are end results of a leader's vision and it is best to break down tasks and delegate it within a team. It is of prime importance for the leader to track the status of the broken down individual tasks for efficient and successful completion of the project. However micromanaging the task owners to a point where they reach frustration does not make a good leader. There is a fine line between good management and micro management.

I am trying hard to not be a micromanager for the projects I handle however would welcome ideas on how to detect if my team is frustrated with my project tracking techniques.

My bigger problem though, is dealing with micromanagers. My personal and professional life seems surrounded by micromanagers. I am not sure if that is my own doing. I have noticed that my emotional outbursts are due to control freaks overlooking my tasks. Emotional imbalance leads to reduction in my productivity. I have also noticed that, of late, my stress levels are blown out of proportion due to this. I am sure this is faced by a lot of people and would like to know a way to manage the micro managers without too much ado. I don't think it is wise to come up with plans which involve a lot of time and effort as it eats into the time allocated for the actual task but there should be a simple solution for this and I am still in search of that.

Final Blog Topic

We've reached the end of this part of your leadership journey - and hopefully you are ready to continue on your own! In this posting, please write about what activity, topic, or reading you found the most interesting and useful. It may be interesting to see how others saw the class and what they found of value.

Also, please briefly describe which book - other than your own - you think was most useful to learn about and if you know of other books that you think would be useful for a future class, please provide the title!

Thanksgiving, Comunisum with hard line Capitalists

When you asked us to recount our thanksgiving and discuss how we use different leadership techniques at different times I laughed. Leadership at our "family" gathering seems nonexistent, however it is not chaos. My family and the people we spend Thanksgiving are a bunch of strays cut from the same block. We all only have immediate family near us. For my family it is due to our immigration from Europe, others are from moves accross the country and some just don't have any family that is still alive. The age range is mixed from 25 to 85 yet we have a lot in-common and widely different views at the same time. Most of us have either worked in business for most of our lives or are working on/have MBAs, yet some are hard line republicans, and others are on the other side of the spectrum. Yet when we get together, we work as a well oiled machine and enjoy ourselves.

Everyone works equally hard, and the meal would not come together if anyone slacked off. There are tough jobs from mixing drinks, to deep frying turkeys and making the sides, and with 15+ running in and out of the kitchen, no one gets hurt and nothing usually gets burnt. It is strange because we are all on the same level even though our skills and experiance are so different.

When I looked back on this, and then reviewed how others view me in leadership roles, something clicked. The reason people see me as middle of the road is because I have learned to adapt and this is something that occurs at our thanksgiving. Every year our duties change and no one complains, we just get it done. At work, voulunteering or in class, I like to read the group I am in and take an educated guess. If that educated guess doesn't work, step back, listen and see what happens next.

I don't want to force something because as i learned helping a friend move in... if the couch doesn't fit through the door, pushing harder will only rip the door frame out. Leading, unless you can wrangle a small country under your control and have no qualms making people dissapear, takes finesse and is as much about observing as it is ordering. So, I would say that I think I am adaptive, and I just need to learn how to adapt better/quicker!

Leadership in Different Groups

I spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles with my aunt and uncle as my family and I have done for all my life except for a year or two. It's an extremely welcoming home that feels calm and tranquil, even when serving 31 people Thanksgiving dinner. Even after my parents separation and my brother's marriage this remains a tradition. My parents alternate years as does my brother and his family, but I generally always go. While I remain my parents child from a generational sense, I would not say that within the family it's regression, as there is a tremendous respect for the childrens' interests and intellect at all ages. I felt growing up, and still now feel love, appreciation and respect by my nuclear and extended family. Rather than regression I feel buoyed and lifted up after spending time with them.

It's fun to see generations of the family grow and change and have their own families. My aunt and uncle are so welcoming that families related through marriage, are welcome and come. One of my cousins was just married and she and her parents and siblings came along with her in laws and husband's siblings. I love this tradition, and the warmth of the home, but I'm slightly off the topic of Leadership.

Within the family I don't have (or really seek) much of leadership position. I think I'm a good contributor within the family.

In the Property Management trade association that I am the local Chapter President this year I think I have a shared leadership style that has been generally very effective. For most significant decisions I ask for the opinions of the Board of Directors, both at our meetings and via email if an urgent issue exists between meetings. I have been fortunate that this volunteer group is very engaged in making this group and our industry better, so many ideas are debated and the good ones executed. With only one exception I only have to ask Board Members once to do something and it gets done. I wish my own office was that efficient!

I manage my own office with an inclusive, but more decisive form of leadership. It is more direct, and yet more informal than my Association Presidency, in that my office is small with only 3 other people in it, so they see my frustration with issues, and get to hear me occasionally vent about people, problems or people creating problems. With the Association, I have a more distant relationship, and I believe that distance likely creates a false positive impression of my leadership.

I believe next year's President will be an excellent leader, based on my conversations with him and my interactions with him on the Board this year. (I must admit to a Hope-Bias in that I was the one who suggested him as the next Chapter President). He is thorough, inclusive and thoughtful. He thinks about all aspects of a decision and considers the many stakeholders it will influence, both currently and in the future. He is good at designing and clearly articulating a vision for the future, as well as taking positive steps to improve our chapter and the organization.

Re: Blog 11 - Seeing ourselves as others see us

In fact my results of how people see me and how I perceive myself were fairly compatible in the test/survey presented in class. The test was very helpful showing which leadership qualities I am doing well and which ones I should improve.

Often it is hard to get an authentic feedback when the majority of people want to tell you what “you want to hear” or flourish too much when doing a constructive feedback. Usually I am very harsh evaluating myself, and it helps me. Also, I try to get feedback from people who disagree with me, or that are not fan of my working style. In fact two of those people agreed to take the survey. It was very interesting that one of them wrote me an email after completing the survey saying that I might not get happy with his review and I told him that those types of feedbacks are exactly what I was looking for. It also reminds me about my one of my approaches getting a job when I put as one of my referrals someone that does not agree with my style.

Re: Blog 10 - Motivation

It’s very easy to motivate me: Get me passionate about something, show me the potential positive outcomes for me, for the company, and for society. Or, just challenge me saying that you do not believe I can do it: Trust me, I can get anything done, as long as it does not harm others.

I also like to believe that I know how to motivate others very well considering that almost always I got the outcomes deserved by my employees. Very very simple formula: You get to know them, understand their motivations and goals, and find a way to match them. Also, people generally lack attention, caring and love. The rare times where this simple formula did not work, I have a serious talk. When people see you as a loving, caring and energetic manager, a simple serious talk is enough for them to understand the gravidity of a situation and follow your instructions.

How I could improve the way I motivate people is a good question that my friends – perhaps Joi, Pryia and Adam – might be able to respond. I believe that sometimes I can get caught on a particular task or project and it might let me to forget for a moment about how employees and colleagues feel. Probably being as attentive as a hawk on my team and in what motivates them.  

Re: Blog 8 - Predictable Irrational

Predictably Irrational was a very interesting class. When we are kids we have a misperception that older people are heroes that always know how to act rationally. Rationality was what I used to differentiate teenagers from adults.  When I got older and integrated better with “adult’s world” I was surprised how irrational anyone can be. And today I believe that NO ONE is 100% sane or rational. Everybody has their own craziness. I also realized how predictable people can be, and in behaviorism classes, I learned how easy is to manipulate people’s decisions and actions when we discover that it is all about how confident people perceive us. Looking at situations as a whole, always being (or pretend to be) confident while acknowledging people’s irrationality and insecurities are certainly the most powerful tools to manipulate any outcome.

Blog 7 - Perception

Not surprising, but very powerful how the impression we have about someone, or the impression someone has about us can influence decisions and attitude. Those perceptions can totally shape the world around us. I am aware of the power of those mind bugs since early age: Since I was a child I always questioned why the bad guy or the witches from cartoons were ugly and the princes, princesses and heroes were always gorgeous. Being disappointed by “beautiful people” (or people who looks like a nice person) and positively surprised by others who look like “bad people” I try and in the majority of the times, I am good trusting people until they prove me wrong. On the same time I highly believe that building relationships is the best way to achieve any outcome so in order to have something done by someone I don’t know much I try to get as closer as I can. Not in a bad and manipulative way but believing that it is more likely that a positive outcome can be raised when people feel important and recognized.

Still, I have few times where my perceptions led me to astray. The only one that I recall is when I was working for Walgreens and I couldn’t believe that seniors were able to shoplift. On the other hand I had many harmful experiences in Brazil with people judging me for being gay: I was locked in a mental clinic for 7 months where people thought I was literally crazy for being gay, others who threaten against my life and even employers who thought I wouldn’t be able to efficiently work because my sexual orientation.  Here I had a couple experiences where people thought I was not able to work well because my limitations with the language. The way I deal with those preconceptions is overcompensating and trying to be my best in all circumstances proving here and back home that my sexual orientation and limitations with English language has no impact in my professional and personal capabilities and values.

How others see us and the middle of the road

Overall, I am pretty shocked at the results from the leadership Assessment. First of all I was shocked at how often I was taking the middle of the road. Then, I was shocked when people agreed with this. For some reason I have always thought of myself as quite ostentatious, outspoken and yet a bit of team worker.

Then, when I took a step back and though about the results, I started to agree with this. Yes I can be loud, and headstrong, however I am more than happy to collaborate and listen, especially when I know I am not a subject-matter expert. However, I am still taken aback at how towards the middle of all these traits other see me as.

I am not sure if this is a weakness, if this means I have a lot to learn, if I am flexible or well rounded. Since I am just starting my career and I am relatively young, I think it is mostly that I have a lot to learn. I need to find out which management techniques work best for me and develop a preference based on my strengths.

Blog Topic 12: Groups and leadership

It is likely that over this long weekend, you are finding yourself interacting with friendship groups and family groups more intensely than you usually do. The holidays and celebrations typically bring people together - which is sometimes good and sometimes bad.

In class, we talked about adjusting your leadership for different kinds of groups - volunteer groups, paid groups, etc. Take this time to reflect on your leadership in the different types of groups of which you are a member (even if you didn't see them all this week). How does your leadership style change? Are you more effective in one group versus another? Do you fall into a pattern such that you are in the same role in all groups? Or, as is typical in family groups, do you find yourself regressing to the same role in the family that you've always played, regardless of other accomplishments? Think about other leaders in these groups. What do they do that is effective and how can you learn from them?

How others see us

I also was pleasantly surprised by the results of others perspectives versus my own. In the areas of Emotional Intelligence both my own view and they others surveyed gave me scores at the mid-5 range. The only category that I rated higher than others was "Use Own Emotions" which says that it's something I need to look at. I'm not sure if it means I don't use my emotions for judgement or if my emotions control me. I think I have generally a calm demeanor, but I know that I comfort eat as a way of dealing with emotions, so maybe I can find another solution.

In the Influence tactics, there was a greater separation between my and other opinions. I believe that I use pressure as a tactic much more frequently than others think I do, by a margin of 6.00 to 3.00. I thought I used Inspirational Appeal much less than others thought I did, which was flattering to me as I would much prefer to influence by appeal rather than pressure. I was also rated much higher by others in the use of Consultation and upward appeal.

In Transformational Leadership I was rated the same or higher on every element. I received a mid-five for vision articulation, which I hope that I have and a 5.75 on providing intellectual stimulation which is good in that I value being stimulated and am glad to be able to demonstrate that for others.

Seeing ourselves as other see us - pleasant surprise

Last week the results of how my peers and senior rate my leadership skills was a very pleasant surprise for me. The ratings were better than my own ratings of myself. I do not know how many of the others in class had a similar experience. My results really had me thinking and pondering a lot. Of all the years I ve been in the technical industry and every organization that I have been working with, I have gone through the process of self appraisal. These appraisals are to be submitted on a yearly basis and takes into consideration all the tasks I had worked on for the entire year. The appraisals need to include my analysis of how I rate my leadership skills, team skills, task scheduling capabilities etc. My self appraisal scares me because I do not rate myself very well and never get to complete it due to my lack of abilities to do it very well. Once my boss actually said that my self appraisal was one of the most modest ones he has seen. I have had a lot of feedback on my self appraisal and its always to improve my appraisal skills. What I observed is that this is very much in sync with the questionnaires and self appraisals we have done in the leadership class. I really would like to work my way towards understanding my skills the way others do. In today's competitive world, it is key to market oneself to grow in the industry and although it does not help to be over confident of one's own skills but underestimating is not going to help either. I really feel that the exercise of getting to know how others see my leadership skills helped me a lot.

Blog Topic 11: Seeing ourselves as other see us

Last week, you received feedback on how other people see you in a leadership roles. Was anything surprising to you? You've had a few days to digest the feedback, how can the information you received move you towards your leadership goals? How frequently do you receive authentic feedback in your everyday life? How can acquiring honest feedback help you achieve your goals?

Motivation and flow

Motivation for people that I work with I find is best achieved through a combination of modeling and clear communication of a future vision. I can't ask others to do what I am not willing to do myself, so modeling good attitude, attention to detail and work quality is important. One of my clients, who manages a large office said that one of the first things he needs to teach new graduates in their first work experience is that you can't "just take a B" on any work project, you need to always work towards the "A" or in other words the best you can do. I repeat that to my staff when it needs reminding. I try to communicate a future vision of a bigger, more efficient company. With the people I work with, I generally have a good relationship and most are good workers, so there are not a lot of conflicts.

The tenants in properties managed by our company I also try to keep a good relationship with. Generally I start to try to motivate by asking for their cooperation, expressing a vision where a future relationship would continue to be good if they do what I have requested. For people for whom that does not work I have to use more of a fear/threat to be motivating. It's not my preference, but the law is very limiting to what can be done. While I was amused by the Glen Ross speech, I grew up in a Real Estate sales office, and I saw better results through organized inter-office competition than I would expect that speech to do. Certainly it takes guts and aggression to be successful in sales, but creating a hostime atmosphere is going to make people not want to be there instead of making them motivated.

Motivation!!!!

Wikipedia defines motivation as an activation of goal-oriented behavior. The professor's post motivated me to look up something so simple as motivation on wiki. There are very few times we look up simple words in English language for their actual meaning or definitions. It takes something like this to motivate someone to do something they would not do otherwise. I hope something would happen to motivate my husband and me to start visiting the gym before the holiday season sets in.

On a serious note, a leader's motivational quality drives his members towards his visions and goals.Leaders are people with a set of visions and a vision can be attained with a set of near and far goals. No leader can get to these goals unless he can motivate his team to work towards the goals. Leaders like Martin Luther King have motivated people through a simple act of communication. Mahatma Gandhi motivated people just by reaching out and spreading an idea so novel that a country backed him enough to help him realize his visions. I have observed that it takes some one who is a good guide and a mentor to motivate me. I still remember how I used to have a tough time with Math until I had a very inspiring teacher who's way of teaching motivated me to work towards a better comprehension of the subject. Although I am currently in the corporate industry I know my long term goal is to start teaching since reading about E R Braithwaite. It takes a mentor to guide someone to do something they never thought they would attempt and make it their vision to excel.

Coffee is for fucking closers and I'm not joking

Motivation is a really difficult task and I believe as a leader you have to gauge what your staff needs. Certain types of motivation are beneficial in the right situation, like Glengary Glen Ross. A lot of people think this is dramatized, but sales organizations have used fear tactics in the past and have had great results, so why not "put the fear of God" in your employees on a day to day basis? Burnout.

Some times people do need a little kick to get them going, but the popular images of being chained to a desk or slaving a way for no purpose come from managers who either under-motivate or use too many scare tactics. So, how do you know what to do? Well, I think everything we have learned so far in this class leads up to this. To name a few examples, EQ helps you understand what is going on with your staff, good communication will allow you to understand what your staff needs and then the proper delivery comes from the image your staff has of you which comes from rapport building, your "power" and connections to the team. If you do all of this, then you can tell if your staff needs a kick, needs to be nurtured or left alone.

The key thing is nothing is perfect and if you are unsure, a softer approach may be the best one to start with so as to not scare anyone off and create a hostile environment. However if you know your staff, and the situation is bad... it may be time to bring out the brass balls and scare the hell out of them.

The one thing missing from the Glengary segment we watched is what to do as follow-up. From working in various sales type organizations, I have found that if you use the "hard" tactics, you need to follow up with some form of nurturing tactic to really make it work. I don't think you can truly scare some one into working these days, all though the economy is bad, and situations are tough, people can still walk away, and that is the last thing you want to do. So, what do you do? Well, if I were in a situation where I felt that the only thing that would help my staff was a strong dose of reality, I would not end the meeting with that. I would help present a plan of action and what I would do to help the staff meet their goals because at the end of the day, the manager is a team leader, and if the team fails, it is the manager's fault. You sign up for that when you step into one of those rolls and you cannot pin it on your team.

So, scaring the living heck out of your team, nurturing them or leaving them alone are always to help team motivation, and the core is knowing the team, but how does one self-motivate? I feel like this is the bigger, harder question because it is all on yourself. I cannot tell myself to really do something if I have set my mind against it, unless it is going towards a cause I believe in. So, I would say that I can only motivate myself when I am working towards my goals. I guess the trick here is to set challenging goals, but stack the cards in such a way that you know what you are working for. An example would be my current job. If you look at the basic task, calling and emailing prospects to engage them in a sales cycle and then pass the lead to the field team, it is not glamorous. Looking at my job that way makes me not want to get out of bed, let alone make 50 phonecalls a day. However, when I step back and look at the bigger picture, and realize this is a good path in which I can learn how to motivate others, and myself, I get excited about the challenge. I look at my job as a learning experience and say hey, what I do today will help me manage a team tomorrow, then it doesn't seem mindless at all.

I guess this goes back to our core values and learning is one of my top priorities. If i can make something into a learning experience, it is almost always worth it!

Blog Topic 10: Motivation

In retrospect, our discussion of motivation in class went in two directions: how to motivate others and how to motivate oneself. The two aren't necessarily unrelated, but it is helpful to consider them separately before combining them. The videos below concern self-motivation, but could also be applied to understanding your followers.

What do you think motivates you? Are there times when you are just trying to get by and are there times when you are striving something really great? When do you experience each kind of feeling? Which feeling are your more comfortable with?

Having considered what motivates you, think about how you might motivate others. Can you shift gears between different styles and types of motivation when working with your followers? Can you use fear? Can you use anger? Can you use inspiration? How can you improve your motivational repertoire?

Geography of Though... hmmm

This is quite interesting, because all my life I have felt like I was the strange one, even though it is hard to notice. The majority of my youth was spent between two countries, the US and Malta. Most people I meet don't even know where Malta is and it has lead to many fun conversations. The thing that made me feel weird was for the longest time I felt like I didn't fit anywhere. When I was in the states I was told I sound funny because of the mixed accent, and when I was in Malta the same happened. This made growing up/puberty a real chuckle, but in the end I spent more time in the States and got a California accent.

Over the years I noticed some strange things about people's preconceptions. One is similar to Joi's of how back home, if you were from the next town over, which sometimes was less than a kilometer, things would be radically different, where as the states, well you usually have to travel quite far... and it doesn't help that the country I am from could probably fit in the Bay. Malta has always been split in a Northern vs Southern way and it has lead to odd conflicts, but since the island is so small, one thing can be agreed upon, travelers without money are not welcome. It always came across as the Maltese disliked foreigners unless they had open checkbooks! There were other issues at hand, but since I was too young and not there long enough, it was hard to see.

Now in California, I would like to believe I didn't live a sheltered life, but in reality, there was a massive bubble that I lived in. The town of Los Gatos, is really privileged and is predominatly white. Fortunately my parents are into community service and found other ways to expose me to the world, so I feel like I was relatively well rounded. However, I won't lie, it was a little strange when I left private religious schools, for a public college, I was a little blown away when I realized that not everyone was catholic. However, I quickly realized that was part of my upbringing, but I also remebered how my parents have always said not to prejudge anyone based on appearance or lifestyle.

That lesson has made life easier, however it isn't always an easy thing to practice. Since we are bombarded with stereotypes on a daily basis, one slip into an us vs them way of thought and that would be disastrous. I think since it is impossible to escape, the most important thing is acknowledge that, and then push passed it in order to function/do your job right.

Geography of thought - What influences culture

Cultural awareness and sensitivity is essential in Leadership and yet forbidden in my work. The Department of Real Estate (who regulates the practice of Real Estate in CA) is very clear that all people should be treated the same, without regard to "race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, familiar status, marital status, sex, sexual preference, age, source of income, or disability." This policy not only recognizes the current law, but exists to combat decades of discrimination and steering (where certain minorities are kept out of specific neighborhoods) etc. So I don't ask work related people where they are from, what languages they speak or anything that would indicate awareness of race, because in the Real Estate world a conversation about race/age etc. opens the door to a discrimination lawsuit.


When I first started with the MBA I was surprised to hear people talk about where they were from. I was also very perplexed by the value judgements placed on location, like "they are from the North, not like us." I wonder if that is because Americans tend to move more frequently and farther from their birth place than people in other nations. I spoke to a man in New Zealand who told me he relocated when he got married and settled down in his wife's city. The distance from his hometown to his new place was 25 miles, I know people who commute further than 25 miles. I would never say that all occupants of Fremont are... because I couldn't accurately generalize.

After I graduated from college I spent 5 weeks in Europe. I didn't realize how much of my personality was influenced by my culture until I left the US. Some things like the American ideas of independence and self-sufficiency are different than much of Western Europe. In some ways this benefits the US in that we tend to be very creative, driven and innovative. In other ways this hurts the US in that sometimes we protect the independent idea at the expense of the majority.

I could not easily think of a time that culture differences created a negative interaction from my point of view, and I think that's due to an underlying belief that blaming difficult situations on a person's race or culture is discrimination. So even in my mind any difficulties I attribute to myself or the other person specifically.

However, after reflection, I think I probably have left a negative impression on other clients by addressing them by first name, especially clients who are older or from more formal cultures. Addressing business people by first name is something I have done throughout my life, from my earliest childhood memories, and I know from both class discussions and my travels that that is not true throughout most of the national and international business culture. It didn't even occur to me to consider changing the formality of my emails and conversation until I was talking to a friend about the honorific -san, and how he addressed his Asian clients vs. Indian clients, vs. Western European clients.

Geography of thought - sometimes leading to comical and sometimes to awkward situations!

It is interesting how a leader needs to look out for the ethnicity, culture etc when dealing with others. Not as a leader but as a general person I have had a few experiences which proves that communication can go wrong or misunderstood in these contexts and this can lead to such situations when leading people as well.

One of the key tasks of a leader is communication and it is extremely important for a leader to be understood correctly. I have had experiences which turned out quite comical but in a professional environment such mistakes can lead to unwanted costs.

One day in my MBA class, we were having a discussion on when each of us had graduated from undergrad degrees. During the discussion, I shared that "I Passed out" in 2003. This had the qhole class go quiet and look at me either with bemusement or shock. I failed to understand people's reaction and kept asking what I had said wrong when one of my class mates asked why I had passed out? Was I a victim of some health issue? That is when I realized that "Passed out" is an Indian term for "Graduated". Passed out for people here means fainted or blacked out. When I translated this to the class we all had a hearty laugh but this just showed how people from different ethical and cultural backgrounds can be misunderstood in their conversations even though they speak the same language.

I have noticed that at work, there are times in a meeting when things get referred to in the language of American baseball. The baseball slang. For people who are not aware of the game because they are from a different cultural background, this can alienate them from the discussion. There have been times when I have been positively offended wondering where the conversation was leading since I have been unable to follow it.

On a serious note, when I first started managing projects of ODMs in China and Taiwan I noticed that our ODM team members, half way through the meeting, broke into their local language(generally Chinese). There would be no preemptive feedback that the teams were going to start conversing in their language amongst themselves. No "Excuse me"s or "Give us a minute". Initially I used to find this extremely rude and request that they translate it immediately. I later on realized that they were not trying to be offensive by alienating me from the conversation but its just not in their culture to excuse themselves before discussing amongst themselves as it is in mine having worked in India and the US. As a leader of the project, I should have been prepared to confront the Chinese culture by learning more about it rather than coming across as a rude person myself and demanding people speak in English or translate as mentioned above.

Culture, ethnicity, geographical background etc play a key role in people's outlook and communication.

This past couple of classes been very interesting and has a lot to do with things that I have been thinking a lot lately. Everybody has a little of insanity inside. When we have a chance to get to know people deeply, looking closely, we can see uncertainty, lack of emotional balance in different areas and insanity, even the most down to earth and the most powerful people. What differs the successful and not so successful ones in the ability to be confident, to keep your emotions balanced and to take right decisions building which is called personal marketing - branding yourself.

The question presented is very interesting: What do and how we explain a decision that make sence in the predicably irrational way but does not make sense in the traditionally rational way? I try to be as rational as I can in my decision, but of course it is part of the human nature and it is important for a leader to trust his/her own instincts while making decisions. It is all about how you present, how you handle the situation and how you get others involved. Innovation and the most exciting findings came to life when people start thinking and acting in a non tradicional ways, figuring out different approaches and being passionate about something.

Of course, some of those decisions can backfire and which differ a good leader is the ability to, when failure happen, recognize, debrief and fix it. It's important to recognize when someone have a better idea or that a decision taken was not the smartest one.

Usually when I take a decision moved by passion instead of being rational, I analyze the situation and (1) if I recognize that it was not a smart move, I think about how I should have handled, I communicate w my team and supervisors and move forward or (2) if the idea makes sence, although not the most rational one, I do go  forward trusting my instincts and convince people about the importance of "thinking outside the box" and things work! I convinced my group that we should bring a run-way show w real models to class to present a marketing project, and although it was not the most rational decision, it was wonderful! Full grade, full attention from class, full level of creativity, and full satisfaction from the team members, professor and classmates.

I remember one time where my boss told me that I should be more strict and handle a customer firmily, not trying to please her but actually invite her to leave and don't come back to store. This particular trouble maker client was known for insulting my employees and make a "show" in store. This particular time she offended a client making a racial comment and I should invite her to leave the store right away, unfortunately that was not my approach and the employee did not feel protected by me or the company. Of course I did not know about the racial comments that she made otherwise I approarch would be different.

Blog Topic 9: Geography of Thought

Last week, we talked about rationality and irrationality. I asked you how you might use "irrational" thinking as a leader and still manage and create change and progress towards goals. This week, we talked about different ways of thinking - that cognitive processes are not universal but may also be affected by culture. So, now leaders not only have to deal with appearing irrational, but also have to deal with ways of thought (mind bugs) that may vary by country, ethnicity, religion, etc. This could easily be overwhelming. But, we've sought to make this manageable by describing the principals that underlie cultures (Hofstede's 5 characteristics), and the principals that underlie rationality.

In this post, think back to a time when you have had interactions where you experienced a "(mis)meeting of the minds." Have you had experiences which, in retrospect, didn't go well because you had different assumptions about causality or use of logic than your interaction partner? What is the geography of your thought and can how does it affect you in your interactions with others? What are the elements of your cultural mindset?

Predictably Irrational Politics

Watching the examples given by Dan Ariely of both the table and the colors on the cube make me doubt my own judgement. And now political ads begin to make sense, in that if we can be fooled by perception and judgement maybe the two parties can say opposite things, and both seem to be correct. Seriously, I think that political parties do use concepts Mr. Ariely brought up especially the idea of two many choices bringing confusion, that could be why we have only 2 significant political parties. Also the idea of comparing yourself to someone similar to you, only not as good, so that you look better by comparison.

Mr. Ariely says that many of these predicably irrational behaviors have a logical base from human history, when how you thought and reacted helped your survival. I wonder if negative political ads also have a evolutionary base. Is knowing the negatives about the opponent more important than telling others about your strengths? I guess if those negatives were once analogous to warnings about danger, than that makes some sense. More likely though, as we talked about with Emotional Intelligence, emotions are faster, so will influence future decisions more frequently. If you have a 30 second ad and talk about how you can save the economy, schools and children you will have some success. If your ad claims "the other guy" will wreck the economy, destroy schools and abuse your children the emotional response comes faster, with more intensity and more likely will be remembered through negativity and fear.

In the last Gubernatorial Debate (I love that title, because if you win, you become the "Head Goober") Jerry Brown offered to halt all negative ads if Meg Whitman would do the same. Meg Whitman countered that she would halt all negative "personal" ads, but the ads talking about his previous experience would not be removed. She (or someone on her staff) knows the strong effect of negative ads.

Patience... the power of a leader

I am glad I recvd the professor's email on what topics we can blog about. After reading Joi's comments to my blog on human perceptions, I would like to post something that we discussed and found very useful for ourselves in our professional and personal lives.

As a leader, one of the key qualities to success and relationship building is Patience. It is true that we deal with seniors, peers, team members in our everyday lives. We spend 8 hours of everyday at work. The remaining we spend with family and friends. As we can observe, our primary duties on a daily basis involves interaction with people - be it in our personal time or professional time.

For relationship building, patience is a key strength to develop. Patience is a friend of "time". We are given this gift so we can understand our opponent or peer better so the interaction can be a value add instead of a pain for both parties involved. As Joi observed, I do place building relationship as an asset over trying to be defensive of my position in a relationship. Over the last 2 years as a Manager, I have a built a better relationship with my team members and customers due to this quality. I would have failed to do this if I had not been patient through the ups and downs of the relationship building process. As well, noting that people can be perceived wrongly, one has to work really hard at some relationships. One of them for me, we winning the trust of my team members. As Joi also observed, gender played a critical role in my case, when I started leading projects since all my team members were men and I was the first woman to lead a project in my organization. One of the sad things is, one of my projects had to be moved to a male project manager due the gender related issues I was continuously facing with the respective customer dealing with that project.

The lessons learnt in my personal and professional life have taught me that there is no substitute to patience and time. Every reltionship needs time and effort. In a professional setup, we dont have time as projects have deadlines and there is no time for relationship building allocated in the project plan, however this is a process that needs to go on in parallel for future projects with the same team members. I actually had a request after 2 years from a project member last week, if I can take over all the projects he is involved in as he prefers me as his PM. This has been one of the key compliments I have received so far and I believe that one of the contributing factors is my relationship with him as a team mate.

Blog Topic: Predictably Irrational

We are continuing our discussion of the human brain with last week's topic of irrationality. These findings suggest that humans are not rational, but are still predictable. This idea has two implications for you as a leader. First, people tend to expect leaders to be rational, to obey certain laws of physics, so to speak, yet, they themselves may act in ways that are not rational. This presents leaders with a conundrum: when you know your actions and decisions make sense, in the predictably irrational sense, but that they do not make sense in the traditionally rational sense, what do you do? How do you explain your decisions? How to defend them?

The second implication has to do with followers and their decision-making strategies. Following on the heels of our discussion of social influence, it seems that you could present information in ways to influence decision-making. Can you think of specific times that this has been done to you, or that, if you had known about it, you'd have changed how you presented information prior to a decision-making situation?

Perceptions - True, False, Painful and Harmful

About 14 years ago when I started this MBA program one of my professors said "Perception is reality" and that expression has stuck with me as it is so enlightening towards other people's point of view. How others think the world is, is often how they find it. People who believe that media is too liberal will find liberal media. People who feel the world is prejudiced will find prejudice. People who feel the world is unfair will find unfairness.

A few days ago I was told about an altercation by one of the parties in the dispute whom I needed to represent at a hearing this evening. Tonight I heard the other point of view, and unsurprisingly, they were different. I don't believe either party is consciously lying, just representing different perspectives.

A perception that hit me out of the blue last week dealt with expectations and my weight. I have been overweight since puberty at a fairly steady upward trend. I realized last week that when I was in Middle School and a little overweight I received stares and comments. In High School people were a little less likely to comment and my weight grew more, in College the trend continued. I realized that as an adult the judgement others have about me and about my weight is less likely to gain comment. I had unconscciously taken the silence as approval or that no one noticed how fat I had become, but that perception or denial is absolutely false. It caused harm by allowing me to justify to myself, maybe if no one noticed or commented, it must not be "that" bad.

Perceptions - are they dangerous!!!!

This blog topic is extremely interesting for me since I have been mulling over perceptions about me in my family. Mind bugs can be a tricky thing. Human perception is sometimes dangerous especially for people like me who tend to upraise and judge things at face value. However I would like to concentrate on people's perception of me. Ever since I got married, I have noticed that there have been very wrong perceptions of me in my husband's family which I have pondered over, spent time on and have wanted to understand.

I am a very non confrontational person and avoid any sort of controversies like a plague. This is simply because these situations make me very uncomfortable. In my husband's family, everyone is strong and communicate firmly with an edge just to make sure their point comes across as a very important one. They tend to be pushy and not necessarily polite. Since I do not have these qualities, I have noticed that their perception of me is that I am a push over. What they fail to understand is that I am just trying to be polite and respectful but that does not necessarily mean that I do not have opinions of my own and have an identity of my own.

Although I have never confronted any of the family members who do this, I do realize that I have been getting frustrated over the years now.

An incident from my husband's office - my husband's peer team had a new employee and for some reason people did not perceive him to have any other general knowledge other than the subject which was his major (as is the perception of most engineers as far as I have known). In a regular conversation people found out that he has a strong understanding of world history, considerable knowledge bank of philosophers around the world and the evolution of the subject over the years, evolution of art over the years etc. My husband came home to tell me about his new found respect for this employee with his vast areas of interests.

Most of the world, like me, judge things and people at face value. They do believe (as observed in class the other day with 90% of the student) that the 2 tables are different and not the same even after measuring them. It is unfortunate that all of us still see the 2 monsters on the screen in your slide show and get more wary of the mind perceived larger one although both of them were the same in size, some of us still perceive African Americans as people belonging to a more aggressive group and I still go up to Egyptians and ask if the see pyramids all over Egypt when we know the pyramids are in Giza alone.

Blog Topic 7: Perceptions

In class we talked about how mind bugs can alter our focus and lead us down the wrong path. We also realized that sometimes we use these mind bugs to our own advantage (such as when crafting our 2 truths and a lie) and sometimes these mind bugs led to errors. Did anything covered in class surprise you? How does these insights into human perceptual processes change your views of your own behavior, past and present? Have there been times in your life when your perceptions have led you astray? Or times when others perceptions of you have been erroneous and perhaps harmful to you? How do you deal with other's misperceptions of you? Do you still think those two tables did not have the same surface area?

Powerful or exercises power at times?

I am not sure if I am really all that powerful, but I feel like I do have some "serious pull" at times. I feel like I need to be passionate about what I am doing to be a leader. I have a hard time trying to get people, or even myself to do really mundane tasks if there is no larger goal, or importance behind the situation. However, on the other hand, when I am interested in the subject, or passionate about something... that is another story.

For some reason, when I get into something, it just invigorates me and when working with a team I want to get everyone on the same page. I feel like I am able to because not only do I care, but I show that I care. I have to agree with the "poses" of power because when I am driven, I use those tactics. This then helps fuel the fire, and everything builds upon itself, but as I stated before, if I don't believe, I just can't get started.

Is this then real power? I think so, but I don't think it means I am powerful. Maybe it is because I envision true leaders as people who are always leading, no matter what, like a ship's captain staying on a sinking ship. For some reason I couldn't see myself doing that. I don't know if that is because I'm self serving, or if that is just a place I would never position myself in because I know I don't want to be a captain for various reasons.

Overall, I want to become proficient with power for two reasons. One because I like working in groups and I feel like some one who is good with power, and really understands power can also be a great team player. For example, if you are working on a project and you know you need help, you will ask for it. Where as some one who doesn't understand power will just try to brute force through the situation or just ignore it all together. this is an area I feel I am decent at, but would like to improve at because humility is a big part of "truly" being powerful in my eyes.

The second reason why I would like to understand, and be able to use power is so that I can control myself in situations of power. This may be a way of rephrasing the first part. But I really do not want to be power hungry or abuse the power I build up for myself. After having a few bosses on power-trips, I feel that there is nothing more that I dislike than some one who is abusing their power.

Big Question Marks

Probably because Power is the least thing I would consider  as priority in my personal - and professional life (Am I on the right course?) it was not a subject that got me excited in class although it brought me different thoughts and no conclusion related to the subject. What motivates people? How power influence ourselves and others? Am I in the right place? Those were the questions I had in mind during the whole class.

Power, for me, is the use of our position, resources and credibility to achieve goals, to impact society or at minimum our community in a positive matter. I am faaaaar behind of being a powerful person: One because I didn't reach much in terms of my career goals, second because I have a very tough time to use the little influence I have to achieve  my professional goals; third, as much as I have impacted the communities I am part of, I am far away to change society; and finally because power is not something that drives me.

Nonetheless, I believe I am somewhat influential. I have a little "magic" that put smile on people's face and make the toughest people soften. I am passionate and move mountains for social causes and I am able to get the team engaged and manage any project successfully. I am also good empowering people, a skill that enable a good leader to thrive. I try to identify passions, aspirations and strenghts that my team have and let them do what they do better towards our common goal. Again, internally and dealing with clients or vendor it is all about collaboration reaching common goals.

The second statement followed by a couple of quesions put a big question mark in my mind "... and many of you will be graduating in a couple of months...what kind of power do you feel ready to exert and what kinds of power would you like to cultivate? How are going you to meet these power goals?" Those questions completely diverged me from the topic "power" and put my whole life and career into perspective. I am ready to use the knowledge I have gained from the MBA associated with my persuasion and personality to succeed as a leader but maybe I didn't get this "power" topic, or... it is still not part of my goals. It might come to me as a gradual consequence of my actions and improvements but it is not something I am searching for.

Maybe I am lost in time, maybe I am still part of a "candyland world" or maybe I do not have any power goals. If I am happy or sad with that... I simply don't know.

Kinds of Power

Power is an interesting thing, in that it takes leadership and power as an element of leadership to move forward and achieve anything, yet power seems to have a smidge of negativity.

Am I powerful person? I don't like to apply that word to myself because of the negative tinge. I would say that I am a person with many responsibilities. If responsibility is the internal view of what is externally seen as power, then I have some. I manage my office, I manage the local Property Managers group, I have some influence the student groups with whom I work.

I hope to become better as a person who empowers others. I try to delegate, to teach, to assign work in digestible, understandable steps, so that others can learn. In our textbook the steps toward empowerment I found very applicable and it has changed some of the ways I teach.

We discussed how to cultivate power, I would like the power and influence from a good reputation, or a reputation for intelligence or the ability to get the job done. Sometimes I give good advice, but don't have the personal power or charisma to convince people, so I have to do more work to demonstrate my position, which wastes time. I think the way to cultivate that power is to be intelligent, and be ready for new experiences when they come my way.

One way that maybe seems a little silly is Caller-ID. We have a relatively new phone system at work, there were many improvements, but we lost caller ID and the labor and material costs to re-install it is about $1000.00. I think our office should spend this money because knowing who is calling when you pick up the phone makes you more knowlegeable when you answer the phone, the two seconds of forewarning of the callers identity is the difference between sounding like "huh?" and "of course I know who you are, and what you are calling about." It's important.

Power

Although I missed the lecture session discussing this topic, I would like to chime in with a few words. I do not consider myself as with power. This goes for all facets of my life starting from personal to professional. Power need not necessarily mean being the CEO of an organization but being an influence when it comes to decision making in any walk of life. I would like to be influential in my professional organization. I have known to make the right decisions when required and have been appreciated for it at work however I am not sure I am influential or powerful. I do believe the key lies in my verbal communication. My verbal communication does not reflect the power I want to instill and this I would like to better with the help of my MBA program.

Silicon Valley has seen a varied range of CEOs of successful companies and it takes a powerful person with the right decision making sense to keep the success rate going for an organization. Although I did mention above that power does not necessarily mean being a CEO, they are the easiest examples to learn from when tracking an organizations success path.

Apple Inc has had a good track record for being successful and have been doing the last quarter with the stock prices hitting sky high. Steve Jobs is one person I would like to learn from. One of the easiest examples is his influence on the consumer market and the customers falling prey to the Apple products. This shows the power of Steve Jobs and Apple to influence millions of people across the world.

SJSU MBA program not only offers courses that apply directly to the working professionals of the Valley but also helps us network with the professionals of the valley and the above skills are seen in some of the MBA students which is an added bonus in the learning process.

Blogging Topic 6: Power

Do you think about yourself as a powerful person? Do you think of yourself as someone who empowers others? We talked about how to be powerful, how to look powerful, and how to exercise power over the past few weeks...and many of you will be graduating in a couple of months...what kind of power do you feel ready to exert and what kinds of power would you like to cultivate? How are going you to meet these power goals?

The lowest score out of the class

Normally, I feel like I am a half decent negotiator because it is part of my job. I have been in sales for some time now and have done well for myself, until I tried to negotiate with Anish.

It came down to an issue of not being able to read his gestures well enough. He made every thing I asked sound like an over bearing demand and that I was doing an extreme disservice to him. From this, it put me in a fight or flight mode and I was just trying to control the damage that was already done.

I learned that hiring negotiations are not like sales and require a different set of tactics. The biggest mistake I made was I made the first demands. If I had let him start I may have been able to give up less by letting him feel more in control and work towards mutual agreements. Not really a give and take, but more of a peer to peer process that would end up in a win-win situation.

This proved that I really need to work on my listening yet again and that the hard sell approach isn't always the best. Listening better will allow me to know what tools to use because I could get a better read on the situation.

How I was a failure at negotiaition

I initially felt I had done reasonably well on the negotiation, and was quite surprised when we tallied our scores and Shawn had done much better on points than me. I tried to trade concessions for several smaller point issues for gains in some of the larger point issues, but apparently not so successfully.

Shawn's position was that he was moving from Italy, so needed larger moving credit and more vacation, as that was what he expected. I tried to get to better than middle ground for all issues, but was not always successful. I suggested starting with the most important issue, salary. But Shawn suggested starting at the top of the list, and I acquiesed to that suggestion. I did not have a relationship with Shawn, so our conversation was not influenced by preconceived notions.

I feel that the style and results of the negotiation were similar to the way I deal with conflicts in my personal life, in that I will yield and be agreeable even when I feel otherwise on an issue or conflict. I choose my battles in what I choose to fight over, and I find most issues not worth arguing with someone. Last night, for example, I had dinner with a friend whose political views are different than mine. He described a candidate that I generally agree with as "evil." I didn't choose to debate with him in that I knew he was not going to change my mind, and I felt it was unlikely that I would change his, so why fight about it? There's no victory possible if you damage a friendship over a minor issue.

However my approach at work, is diametrically opposed to my personal way of dealing with negotiation and conflict. At work I am polite, but firm. I have to say "no" or "you can't have everything you want" several times a day. So I react much for firmly at work.

I was initially satisfied with my position, in that it felt like I had done well, so I was very surprised by the point results.

From this I can learn that when I negotiate I need to pay attention to the items that are most important, like in this case salary. Not all issues have the same weight to all parties within a negotiation and it's important to find out which issues are most important to you and the other party. In examples like the Location, there may be some issues that you are not in conflict, you may both want the same thing. Without discussion and concentrated listening, you may not be aware of the position of the other party.

Blogging Topic 5: Negotiation and Conflict

Last week, I asked about manipulation vs. influence. It's a hard question, knowing when you cross the line to doing "bad" manipulation vs "good" influence. Like most ethical dilemmas, the line is fuzzy and moves a lot. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a ethical dilemma. We'll continue to revisit ethical dilemmas as we go through the semester, with the idea that keeping an eye on your core values will help you resolve them.

In class this week, you engaged in a negotiation. Did you think you did well in the negotiation? Were you surprised at your actual score on the negotiation compared to the scores of your partner and other members of the class? What kinds of information and influence did you try to bring to bear in the negotiation? Did your preconceived notions of your negotiation partner influence approach? Do you think your performance in the negotiation reflects your general approach to conflicts in the rest of your life? Were you satisfied with your performance? What can you learn from this negotiation (or from the role play you are working on) that informs you interactions with people around you?

This was tough to write

This topic has been impossible to write on because I feel both terms are so close. I believe that no matter how good your poker face is, your intentions come out through your actions. So, if your goal is to make yourself the best by any means necessary, you will be manipulative. Where if your do have some values, and take into account other people (or even the world), you will come across as influential. To me, that is the key difference between the two. As an influencer, you will know when to use these tools rather than a manipulator who would focus only on making themselves better. However an influencer can be worried about their reputation, but it is not their sole focus which is another key differentiator to me. Personally I do want to "get ahead in life" and I will work hard at this, but sacrificing other people, metaphorically or physically, intentionally is just not an option. I chose intentionally because we all make mistakes, and even though our intentions can be good, we do mess up from time to time.

Another reason to understand the powers of persuasion, even if you don't intend to use them often, is so you can understand where another party is coming from. Spotting someone who is trying to manipulate you is about as useful as being able to influence. As Joi brought up the used car sales man example, sometimes people are just trying to cram a deal down your throat and will do anything, and other time people are trying to genuinely help you.

As for the last question, is it ok to influence people if it is for their own good? Well that also depends because "good" is not universal between cultures and even individuals. So, how can you be sure that you are influencing someone for their own good? It is a line that we, including Google must walk very carefully because there are no universals. I think all we can do is experiment and learn from our mistakes, in order to know how and when to use persuasion so that we are influencing and not manipulation.

Influence vs. manipulation

Last week's speaker was amazing. I was appreciative of his thoughtfulness and awareness of why he was doing the things he did. He's a great speaker for this specific class because he can cite leadership strategies, explain why he used the ones he did, and if they were successful. I appreciated his views as acting as a buffer for his staff, it's very true and the sign of a strong manager, whereas a weaker manager would duck out of the line of fire and let his employees take the heat. I liked his idea of taking a few minutes every day to ask, "what went well, what went poorly and how can I improve tomorrow." I have tried to do this daily since hearing that idea. While I do not have his high level job, or salary :(, one thing that our jobs have in common is that they are often self-directed. I have responsibilities that must get done; how and when they are done are my decisions.


Influence (or persuasion) and manipulation may be two sides of the same coin, the difference is the goal. As last weeks student presentation emphasized "be wary if someone is trying to convince you of something that benefits them." Every manager has the responsibility of persuading others to follow, and doing that by showing the goal or path, then modeling the behavior, leading with integrety. A good leader will not drag his followers like disobedient dogs on a leash, but convince them that they want to go in his direction. Laszlo, for examplem mentioned using different managment styles with different leaders, which is just good sense. In my opinion it's persuasion when the use of the different approaches for different managers results in the managers being successful which makes the department successful, demonstrating good leadership and management. I think of manipulation like car salesmen that have to "go see the manager" no matter what, the scary thing is that it still works. There is also the question of honesty within integrety. You can lead from a position of integrety, without telling all you know. Acting as a buffer, so everyone can work together sucessfully, you can use influence for the good.


The question of Google doing a manipulation "for our own good" is tricky? Is it like censoring results to skew results positive or negative or to slant them left or right? For "our own good" sounds like a decision a parent makes for a child unable to correctly reason through to the correct decision. I don't want Google deciding if I should get ice cream before dinner, and likewise if I do a search and the results exist, Google should provide them, or like they did in China explain that something has been censored, rather than show no results at all. If I did a search for "bomb making" and "nearby public transit" I would have a negative impression of Google if I could not access that information. Google could certainly make a case for squelching searches like that for general public good, but that conflicts with their mission of free information.

Blogging Topic 4: Ethics and influence

This week we had a great guest speaker and we talked about social influence. He mentioned that at Google they are looking at people who have an array of influence skills and strategies. He also mentioned that, as a corporate entity, Google is fighting to maintain a positive public image. Related to that, here’s today’s blog topic: What is the difference between manipulation and influence? When does it become playing politics and misdirection? Where is the line between bad and good – and how do you find that line? As this class arms you with more “weapons” to influence others, we must also take into consideration our ethics. Can you use these "weapons" of mass influence and still stay true to your core values? And, if the easy answer is that it is okay to use these weapons if you are using them in the service of your values, do you need to take into account the people you are using these weapons on? For example, if Google were doing things with their search that influenced people, but for the people's own benefit, would that be okay?

Encoding - Reading Emotions and Active Listening

I really like the exercise and I truly believe that the way we say things, our tone of voice, expression posture are as powerful, if not more as what we say with words. You can say pretty much say the same thing using different tones and each of them come across with a different meaning.

The exercise showed that I have a strong ability to express my feelings – all classmates were able to guess right; however it also showed that I am not as good reading people’s feelings, which I thought I was. After class I reflected a lot on it and realized that sometimes I am too focused on myself and my feelings and forget to take attention on people’s feelings around me.

I have some magic with the way I say things. Usually I can say the same thing in a more persuasive way that can convince the hardest people to deal with; however the game helped me to understand that sometimes I should learn how to read people more. This is very interesting. I do care a lot about people and understand a lot circumstance etc but also I should be more attentive clues that often I am not. Probably I do get very caught in my own emotions, situations and projects that I forget to realize or value people’s thoughts and feelings – when I don’t see them. It also raises another issue raised in class: Active listening. Truly take attention in what others have to say.

Active listening as discussed in class is not only listening and reading the signs but actually decoding those signs,is not decoding and truly understanding and absorving what the other person has to say, including what they don't say. I do believe that active listening and attention for how people act and react is a key to be a good leader. See even what is not said and it comes with practice.

More than the activity, the discussion afterwards was very valued to me. We are discussing in class that sometimes it is important to be firm, to be tough. My management style is very persuasive but also soft and few classmates brought into consideration the importance of having the restrictive and rigid position sometimes. That’s another issue I am working on.

Emotional Encoding

I believe I did fairly well in the game of encoding last week. The only reason that could happen was because I am a professional on-stage theater dance and drama performer. I have been doing this for the last 20 odd years and enjoy emoting my sentences and dialogue delivery to the greatest extent. Unfortunately this does not help me as a manager in the technical industry dealing with customers everyday. I have had people tell me, more as a constructive feedback, that I need to develop a poker face and emote less. As the professor mentions in her blog, positive emotions are always a boost to the parties involved in a conversation but when trying to be diplomatic and resolve controversial situations in a professional atmosphere, a poker face might help me better (instead of getting me in trouble :)) otherwise. My husband who is employed in a similar role in the marketing department in a different organization than I has observed that he is more successful as a customer facing individual than I who expresses her emotions on the face while trying to be neutral in the dialogue delivery to get work done.

Encoding

The encoding exercise was challenging especially when the words and the sentiment seemed dissimilar. I was fortunate to be lucky in my first emotion, "enthusiasm" but later choices were less simple emotions, and harder to act out. It's also funny how people laugh in embarrassment trying to do the exercise, even in a small non-threatening group. Our foursome was the last group to finish because each sentence would be read three or four times and we would debate what emotions were reflected with each delivery. We wanted very much to figure them out correctly.


The exercise is clearly applicable to me at work. As our relationships with our clients are at-will, I try and be courteous and agreeable most of the time, and not strongly disagree verbally, even when I feel vehemently about a subject. As a manager I am often speaking to home owners about necessary repairs. I have learned, with experience, that my emotions, or feelings about the severity of the problem strongly influences the level of anxiety or worry experienced by my clients. Sometimes what they do or how quickly they do it is based on my words or emotional reaction to the problem. To try to alleviate their concerns I look for a general tone of "don't worry, it's normal, not a big deal." Sometimes problems are a big deal, and when not repaired become a bigger deal. When I then say, "remember we talked about this 2 months ago" on more than one occasion a client has said to me "I didn't realize it was serious."

A concrete example of this just happened. A client hired us and I went out to look at the property with him for the first time. There was a tree in the front yard that was growing at an angle in the front yard. It's trunk diameter was about the width of the sidewalk it was growing up under and destroying. I asked the owner if he was planning to remove the tree or trim it as it was top-heavy and did not look healthy. He told me he had no money to trim or remove the tree. I mentioned that Eucalyptis trees had a habit of splitting, and that it could be dangerous and it created liability for him. He told me he couldn't afford to do anything. One of the neighbors came by and mentioned that he would not even park under the tree, but the owner was adamant. Two weeks ago a branch the size of the front yard fell off the tree, just missing the roof and the tenants car in the driveway. After that the owner was ready and willing to remove the tree immediately. Could I have changed his mind initially with a firmer tone of voice or how I expressed my concerns? It's possible.

Emotional Encoding

Although this exercise was quite difficult, I really enjoyed it. At first it felt like such a pain because the phrases were so odd. Each tongue twister was laborious to say, and to encode an emotion on top of it, especially one that might contradict the saying, was a challenge in of itself. However, once I got past the difficulty of the task, it reinforced that I am not the best reader of emotions and surprised me that I was only ok at displaying emotions.

I’ve known for a long time that I can’t always figure out the whole message when someone is speaking accept for the over arching tone. I don’t know if it is that I’ve just no put much time into learning to decode beyond the basics or if I thought I didn’t need to care as long as I could get the gist of what is being said. Recently, I have learnt that this is not the case, through difficult situations at work and my personal life. Sometimes you do need to fine tune and really pick out the exact emotion some one is feeling to truly communicate with them on a meaningful level.

In a sense, I chalk this up to a greater learning experience, and the trial and error does not bother me because I feel like if I really mess a situation up, I am willing to bring up my failure, even if it means taking some harsh criticism. In the end, I would rather not make the same mistake twice. This is because there are so many different ways at approaching a conversation and experience will help you understand the full extent of the conversations you have.

However, I do like being pushed in the right direction in a zero risk environment like in this activity. The stakes are low, so you can really step out and not worry about being wrong, where if you are dealing with a depressed coworker or an angry friend, the stakes are high. I felt that the only way to get the most out of the exercise was to act as best you could and see what the group came up with, and pay careful attention when you were not speaking.

The one thing that stood out the most was how different cultures synthesize peoples emotions based on facial expressions. This made me pay attention to the whole (posture, mouth and eyes) to get a better idea of what some one was “saying” when they spoke. It is so easy to get distracted or miss something because you are ignoring a piece of the puzzle. Also, this made me aware that people I am speaking to may not look for the same things I do, and that I will need to be more attentive to the whole picture as well.

Blogging Topic 3: Displays of emotion

We'll leave behind the Blind Square this week (finally) and talk a little about Emotional Intelligence and the related concepts.

This week in class, you played the Emotion Coding game. Like most of the games in this class, it was designed to challenge you and make easy success unlikely. For some people, it might have been hard to "be onstage" and for others, it might have been difficult to express emotions. In this blog topic, I'd like you to reflect on the Emotion Coding game and how your performance in this game is associated with the rest of your life.

For example, I remember my mom saying (over and over and over) while I was growing up that it "wasn't what you say, it's how you say it" and I cultivated a fairly sarcastic tone of voice during my high school and college years. I didn't realize it until people started saying I was cynical or unsupportive. To me, a core value is being dependable and supportive. If you need, I'll be there. And, another core value is being positive and believing that everything will work out. So, it was hard to hear people think that I wasn't authentic or that I view the world (and the people in it) in a negative way. I had to check myself and what I was saying, especially when making first impressions, to make sure that my values were coming across. I grew up in an environment in which positive emotions were not frequently or easily expressed (or any emotions, really), because that was not my family's way. Realizing that I have this particular cultural background has helped me bemore aware of my emotional expression habits.

Values and Vision - Blog topic 2

I do believe that I acted according to my belief that every team functions best when there is a single leader who should be followed during the blind square activity. One key value I have is to never give up, however during the exercise I noticed that all of us gave up at some point or the other. This may have been due to directions from multiple people trying to take charge and the activity itself getting prolonged.

As a leader I do believe that any task will be successful if the leader sets out with a definitive plan to achieve the goal and tracks the plan at every point in time of the project. I also believe that for a project to be successful, it is very necessary to ensure that the team members are going along with the plan without getting deviated. Also the leader has to ensure that the team members are very aware of the priority of the tasks and action items on the way to achieving the goal. The leader's task is to also set the priorities for the task which would be a part of the project plan he draws out.

During the blind square game, since there were team members who instantly took charge as a leader I was waiting for them to provide the above direction to all of us who were team members. I do believe that a few of the leaders were in the right track as per the vision defined above and thus the end result being a perfect square.

BT2 Values and Vision

From the few times I have done the Blind Square exercise, it seems like there are always new challenges. The rules change from time to time, so each experience has been new for me. It is not an exercise I would like to do too often because it could become tedious, but I feel it is always a good reminder of how important communication is. It also shows how difficult communicating can be when everyone does not have the same perspective. This is a good reminder for the workplace because even though most of us speak English on a daily basis, it is not always the same "language" due to idioms and different perspectives.

As far as incentives go for doing an activity like this again, I think it depends on who you are. What I mean is that if you are taking the MBA program because you want the stamp on your record so you can enter a higher paying job role, well, then it is just a tedious exercise to go through. However, if you are looking to truly improve, then these activities can help with repetition. Deep down, I will admit, the exercise felt like a waste of time. It was also hot out and I was pretty tired, so that didn't make things go so well, but the discussions we had after the activity were unique, useful and helped me think about what we had just done. This was the reward for me and allowed me to look back and justify struggling through the activity.

I guess what truly motivates me is learning. I don't mind doing something if it means I will come out of it wiser than before. However, it is not always recognizable until after the fact. I guess this is still a bit mercenary because I am not doing something unless I get something tangible out of it, but I feel like it is a little easier to self motivate unless the task is mundane. For example, the square activity was difficult and really a pain to get through, but I reinforced a lesson and learnt new things about a common situation, however if the professor just handed us all hammers and said go pound on rocks for half and hr and then said "well this concludes the class for today, I hope you enjoyed wasting your time and money" I would be quite angry. Even though I would have learnt that this class was a joke if pounding rocks was going to be our activities, it would not be a worthwhile lesson.

Regarding the question on if everyone only did things based on an economic calculation, how would that shape society, I don't know if our world today would change all that much. We currently need money to live in this society and I feel it is hard to do something just to do it. However, what we choose to learn or understand out a situation totally depend on us. So even though I may be getting my MBA to help further my career, that is not my only motive. I am doing it for the knowledge because I like to learn and do my best not to make the same mistake twice.

As far as my core values goes, the activity reinforced the idea that if you approach a task with an open mind, or at least be willing to reflect on the activity at some later point, you will learn something and you should be able to apply it to your daily life.

Blog Topic 2: Values and Vision

Here's the thing about the Blind Square Exercise - you'll probably see it again. It is a classic team-building and ice-breaking exercise. So what you can learn from doing it repeatedly? Many of the veterans understood that the frustration of being a new-person at the task is important, but what about the frustration of being a non-new person? Can anything be learned from that? Moreover, thinking about Onder's comment in class - you all apparently failed miserably at the task last time, so what wisdom did you have to impart? Some say there was no incentive for doing the task again - how about to do it successfully? So, you believe that the only incentive for doing anything well is payment? What about the intrinsic
value of a job well-done, of pride? We'll talk about it later in class, but consider what makes you do the things you do and consider whether
if everyone only did things based upon an economic calculation of personal benefit would result in a functioning society?

How did your behavior in the Blind Square task fit with your core values? How do you reconcile your actions there with the visions you have of yourself as a leader?