Lessons Life Teaches - I

Any executive working in any type of service industry learns that there are certain business etiquettes to follow to keep the customers satisfied which ensures a long, happy and prosperous career. Years of study and hard work does not ensure that we start off our professional lives with ease. Neither does it ensure that working according to our learned behavior would ensure continued professional life.

Being in the service industry requires the individual to have a very high ‘learn ability’ factor to start and survive in the industry. Obviously some of the behavior is gained through osmosis peers and leaders in the trade. But we consider ourselves lucky to be able to attend knowledge transfer workshops conducted by the best in the business. Business houses spend quite a bit of money to make all of us ‘customer savvy’. There have been proper disciplines established in the course of many years and there are specialized institutes that teach us these skills – skills that we have to willingly or un-willingly learn in order to survive in the industry.

After attending one such session I was enthusiastically telling my father as to what I have learned. In summary, I told him the following things are necessary to achieve a high degree of customer satisfaction:

1) ‘LISTEN’ to what the customer has to say. He might tell you what all he has already tried out and failed. This would reduce the time that you take to resolve the issue.
2) Be ‘EMPATHETIC’ instead of ‘SYMPATHETIC’
3) Follow up to ensure that the issue has been resolved in its totality. This guarantees customer satisfaction.
4) Put forward suggestions to the customer, where ever applicable, to prevent future occurrences of the issue.

Both of us had a long and fruitful discussion on the topic which left me completely satisfied and contented in the fact that I have learnt something useful that day. While we were having our discussion, we were being interrupted by our regular mason who had just finished renovating our home. He had come again to address a complaint lodged by my father for the newly installed taps. He ‘listened’ to what my father had to say and gathered more information by asking a couple of pointed questions to my father. He was able to give us a solution almost immediately but wanted the taps to be turned off for the day. He showed enough ‘empathetic behavior’ for us to actually agree to the inconvenience of dry taps for the entire day. He called the plumber himself, instructed him and left. He returned in the evening again to ‘follow up’ whether the problem had been resolved now. He also made ‘additional suggestions’ in order to avoid such an issue again.

The following day, as I sat in a reflective mood, I realized that the mason had demonstrated all of the qualities of an effective executive in the service industry – listen, empathize, follow-up, suggest. I had a practical demonstration of the theory learned in an expensive class from a guy who was educated enough only to sign his name, had never been to college, did not hold a white collar job nor did he attend any high end knowledge transfer workshop. Yet he had the wisdom – wisdom that he would pass to his children without spending a penny.

Additionally, I realized that although I have more degrees beside my name than him, yet I can learn a lot from him about surviving in the cut throat service industry. It is a very humbling realization and I am proud to admit that life teaches its lessons via un-expected sources and it is all the more important to remain simple and humble for continued success.

Overcoming Negative Attitude

In the various posts in this blog it has been repeatedly pointed out that attitude towards life makes all the difference between being successful and un-successful. So I thought it good to pen down some of my thoughts on attitude starting with how you recognize whether the attitude that you show is a positive one or a negative one.

Knowing and accepting that you have a negative attitude is a tough task. All of us are very conditioned to the kind of attitude that we display towards various situations in life. We take it for granted that it is ‘the’ positive thing to do. Our attitude is a skin that we wear which has been stitched by our peers, family, culture and tradition. So identifying that we have things that we can change within our own self to lead a better life is not easy. The only way one can do it is when one is exposed to a different attitude altogether. All you need to do is appreciate a good attitude when you see it, recognize the fact that you need to change your own attitude, and be open to change it.

There are many things that characterize a negative behavior like inability to take responsibility of one’s own action; blaming others when things go wrong; procrastination; inability to deal with stress; inability to deal with situations conclusively; having a complaining nature; negative thinking; self pity; depression etc. One of the best gifts that you can give your own-self is to recognize the truth about the kind of attitude that you have and be willing to change it.

People with positive attitude are happier, more contented, have a solution to any challenge that they face, generally lead a more fulfilling professional and personal life, are great doers and thinkers; have the ability to take a lot of responsibility for situations in life and lead them to a fruitful conclusion. Merely by the attitude that they adopt they cut out the stress not only for themselves but also for others who are associated with them.

One of the easiest things that you can follow is to stop negative self talk. Negative self talk becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and the world acts according to the negative image that you project to the world.

Another one is to recognize and avoid negative situations and persons. It might prove to be a challenge to turn a negative situation into a positive one to suit your own changing outlook towards life. But it might not be easy to change individuals whom you pinpoint as negative people….remember you have had first hand experience in identifying negative characteristics in you own self. Extend the same analysis to others to enable you to take corrective action and avoid stressful situation.

Avoiding stressful situation comes as a bonus when you avoid negative people. Eliminating or minimizing stress from a situation automatically enables you to deal with the situation in a better manner and arrive at a conclusive result.

Once you have taken the responsibility to change you own attitude, taking responsibility of other situations on your life and your behavior towards them is a natural progression. It only takes a little time and effort from your side.

The above things that I have discussed have been tried out first hand on my own self and have achieved very good results. I would be happy if my experiences in life contribute a little towards making your life a little happier or contented.

Best of Luck!!!!!

Simplicity and Humility - Best friends of Success

Through personal experiences I have found that Success is more meaningful if it goes hand in hand with simplicity and humility. Being successful leads to confidence in self but if it is without the humility factor then it is arrogance. Humility does not mean demeaning oneself through actions or words but it is a quiet acceptance of the success achieved.It is also arguably true that it is important to blow your own trumpet to highlight your achevemnets to make others sit up and notice. This is unfortunately a repeated activity as it has a short lifespan. Letting others blow your trumpet makes sure that the sound is carried far and for long.
Humility is often clubbed up with simplicity. Simplicity is a very sujective term. How much simple makes up for the simplicity factor? The President of a country can lead a simple life, so can a commoner but the quantum of simplicity is varied. Let me restrict myself to define simplicity in terms of action and behaviour. In short, simplicity does not mean that one is a simpleton, although the person is very popularly called just that.
Most people have a tendency to ride very very high on the small success that they achieve. I knew a Manager once who was on his first job. He was out canvasing for some courses offered by an Educational Institute with 2 more co-workers, junior in positon than him. They were supposed to stick posters on the walls and hand pamphlets to the passers by. He stood at a little distance and did not participate in the activity at all. The reason was that he was an MBA and it was below his dignity to do something like that. This behaviour earned him a lot of disrespect from his co-workers and a lot of ribbing. Active participation would have had the opposite effect. It made me wonder what they person was thinking about;an educational degree does not gaurantee any respect or responsibility delegation. In fact education contributes to only 15% of the entire success story of life. The rest 85% is just attitude.
In contrast to this, I had an oppurtunity to work under another manager with 10 years of experience who would help carry equipment from one place to another alongside the peons and guards without a thought and go down on his hands and feet to make sure that all the connections are properly made. This characteristic made him one of the most economical person around. Whenever we need to go somewhere, then he would simply load all the equipment in his vechicle and the two of us would set off, sure that we could be able to carry the entire load ourselves if we did not get any help. This fact also made us more reliable and more work got delegated to us by the OEMs. When the people at the OEM level were still grappling with the beginings of Plan B of a project in case of failure of Plan A, we were delegated the entire work by their Regional Head and we successfully executed Plan B in 15 hours.This reflects simplicity of our actions as we were doing the 'menial jobs of peons, porters and guards'. This simplicity reflects our humility because we did not put our professional positions before us and worked just to get the things done without much hassle. Is it really downgrading of self or is it making the people standing around realize the dignity of labour? We have often found people stepping up to us to help us after we have initiated the process.
Being humble is one of the cornerstones of achieving and maintaining your success. Most people make the mistake of thinking that it is easy to push around people who are simple and humble. They dont stop taking advantage of the fact, forgetting one thing that the doer learns the fastest and the best. It expands the bag of experiences further. And ultimately this would help us to push ahead of the crowd.
This journey of life has made me respect these two qualities so much that I never think of even swapping them with any other quality. I wont say that success is complete because achieving one success makes you hungry for yet another success. The process is an ongoing one. There is no greater attraction than a successful person. Humility keeps you popular and Arrogance ultimately alienates you. Is it easy being successful and arrogant - probably yes. Is it easy being successful and humble - definately yes; you just got to try. As I always maintain, your attitude make all the difference.