Building a strong professional network

[This write-up was published as an article in the Straits Times, Singapore's leading newspaper on April 12, 2016]

A strong professional network is an invaluable asset in one’s career. It can be a tremendous source of information and inspiration.  It can even help you find your dream job since people usually prefer to hire those familiar to them rather than someone completely new. And as the higher you climb in your career, the more you will need the strength of a network to survive and thrive.

A few suggestions on how to build a strong professional network:

Focus on quality – not quantity:

Having hundreds of connections on LinkedIn or a huge collection of business cards serves no purpose if you do not have people who are willing and able to help you. Do your contacts know you well as a professional ? Would they be willing to collaborate with you or recommend you ? If not, you need to work on strengthening the quality of your relationship with your network. A good way to build strong relationships is to identify people who share your values and passions. Relationships that are founded on common values and interests are more likely to sustain and will also be fulfilling.

Be Proactive:

It is important to take the initiative in staying in touch with your network. Do not wait for others to initiate things. According to Jayesh Menon, Global Organizational Effectiveness Leader at Micron Technology, online connections can be a good way to start a relationship but it is necessary to reconnect through phone or emails. And nothing beats a face-to-face conversation, even if it is only once a year, he says. To start networking with a person you are not familiar with, Jayesh recommends finding a common friend or a common interest and expressing a genuine desire to connect. According to him, people generally will not refuse a request to connect with someone if there is mutual value add in networking.

Think about what you can do for others:

A great way to keep your network strong and healthy is to focus on what you can do for people in your network. For example, if you see an interesting piece of information or a job posting that might be relevant to someone you know, send it to them even if they have not explicitly asked you. Similarly, try to find opportunities or projects that you can work on with people in your network. At the same time, do not overdo it and impose yourself on others in the name of networking.

Volunteer:

Volunteering is a great way to find a good network. Identify a meaningful activity that interests you and join a group of volunteers in that line of work. You can try to volunteer in an activity that is related to your work. For example, if your occupation is a safety officer, you might consider volunteering for community activities related to emergency preparedness. You will open yourself to a network of interesting people. Such a network can open up unexpected possibilities. Besides, volunteering is a very fulfilling activity and looks great on your resume as well!

Avoid Complacency:

When times are good, it is easy to forget the importance of a network. Jayesh cautions against becoming complacent while cultivating relationships with people in your network. You might even consider using a spreadsheet to keep track of your contacts and make sure you touch base with them regularly. Maintaining a strong network should be high on your priorities always.

If you do not have a strong network yet, the best time to start is now. As the saying goes - the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now. A good network built strongly and nourished with care, can yield rich results in the long term.

Handling Hostility at the Workplace

[This write-up was published as an article in the Recruit portion of the Straits Times, Singapore’s leading newspaper, on January 16, 2016. ]

Background and motivation for this write-up:

One day at work, I happened to witness a hostile exchange between two colleagues. Emotions ran high and there was a lot of negative energy flowing. Nothing productive or conclusive emerged from the exchange – the only outcome was that the participants’ blood pressures were significantly elevated! As I reflected on this incident during the rest of my workday, I thought about what I could learn from this.

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Wikipedia defines hostility as emotionally charged angry behaviour. In everyday speech, it is used as a synonym for anger or aggression.

Every one of us has, at some point of time, encountered hostility at the workplace. Learning to deal with hostility is a valuable skill. Here are a few ways you can manage hostility at the workplace effectively.

Keep your equanimity and composure at all times

Remind yourself that if the other person is rude or hostile, it is their problem - not yours. The person's behaviour should not affect your peace or blood pressure unless you allow it to.

Maintain your poise. While this is easier said than done, techniques like deep breathing, yoga and meditation - when practiced regularly - promote self-awareness and train you to deal with such situations better. Like all skills, the ability to handle stressful people and situations can be consciously developed through practice.

Motivate yourself by giving yourself small treats each time you handle a hostile person deftly. Your calm demeanor will make it clear to everyone that you are not going to get flustered even if someone shouts at you in an uncivil manner. Over time, there is a good chance that the offender will realise the futility of throwing a tantrum at you.

Do not yield to the hostile person’s unreasonable demands

While it might sound like an easy way out, yielding to the person's demands will only set you up for further trouble.

It will send a message to him or her that you can be pushed around by throwing a tantrum. While you should not respond emotionally to a hostile person, you should not send out a signal that you are a pushover.

Empathise with the person

While this might sound like a rather idealistic way of dealing with a hostile person, putting yourself in his or her shoes can help you manage the situation better.

This is not to say that hostility should be condoned or accepted. Empathising can help you stay calm and hence handle the person more rationally. It may also enable you to understand the underlying cause of the person's hostility.

Often, the underlying cause for hostility is insecurity. By mitigating the hostile person's fears, you might be able to eliminate the hostility over time. You might even win yourself a new friend or ally.

Prepare yourself

Mentally ready yourself before a meeting with a hostile person. Prepare yourself emotionally and remind yourself not to lose control.

Foods like chamomile tea and dark chocolate have the ability to reduce stress. You can use them as aids to boost your calmness. Remind yourself that you will not compromise your physical and mental health by getting flustered.

Find healthy ways to get rid of stress

If you do get stressed by hostile colleagues, find healthy ways to dissipate the negative energy by indulging in a creative hobby or exercise.

There are plenty of ways to do this - such as music, dancing, sketching, taking a walk in the park and spending time with loved ones. Develop the self-awareness to fmd out what works for you and indulge in such activities.

Have a Plan B for your career

It has been said that Anxiety = Uncertainty x Importance. This means that the more importance you attach to a situation, the more anxious (and stressed) you are likely to become.

On that note, a colleague of mine impressed me with his ability to maintain extraordinary grace even during extremely hostile circumstances at work. I once asked him what his secret was. He told me that he had an alternate career as a part-time fitness instructor. During stressful confrontations at work, he would remind himself that his life does not depend on his job, since he could always fall back on his Plan B. This freed him from anxiety and helped him to treat hostile colleagues as minor nuisances rather than major problems.

Having a Plan B also gives you a better chance of managing crises like economic downturns, job obsolescence or job loss. This security keeps your stress levels low and reduces the possibility that you might become a hostile person yourself.

However, if all else fails and you are stuck in an environment where hostility and rudeness are the norm rather than the exception, you should start thinking seriously about fmding a better place to work.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that hostility is not a pleasant thing and you do not have to accept it as a part of your work life forever. While hostility cannot be eliminated from the workplace, you are entitled to look for workplaces that are - for most part - decent and civil environments.

How to train an employee faster ?

Picking up new skills is an indispensable skill in the workplace today. Gone are the days when an employee could survive (even thrive) in a job by doing the same things over and over with no change. With constant changes in the corporate, technological and social milieu, it is simply impossible to survive without learning new skills.

This brings us to the obvious question – how to train an employee faster ? In a world where time is money, the sooner the employee picks up the necessary skills, the more profitable it is for the employee as well as the employer.

So what can an employer/manager do to get an employee trained faster ?

• Check for fit: Before even letting an employee embark on new learning, a manager should check for a fit between the employee’s natural ability and the nature of the new job. Does the new learning require skills that are completely antithetical to an employee’s natural abilities? Would the employee be better off doing something else ? Managers are naturally trained at identifying weaknesses and gaps and addressing those. However, they often miss out on an employee’s natural strengths and fail to use those. If you have an Albert Einstein in your team, wouldn’t it be smarter to let him work on particle physics instead to trying to train him to be a zoologist?

Now, let’s assume that a manager has already checked for a fit between the employee’s natural skills and the nature of the job. What next ?

• Motivate: This is truly the most important requirement to get an employee to learn faster. Without this, it is virtually impossible to get the employee to focus on learning anything new. Learning something new is a process of change, and there is always a natural inertia that resists change. Motivation is required to overcome the resistance. The learner needs to be convinced of the importance of learning, and the rewards thereof. And it is the responsibility of the manager to ensure that motivation is in good supply. A manager should not assume that the employee will learn spontaneously. Is there enough reward to motivate the employee to learn something new? Higher the motivation, faster the learning and better the results.

• The right level of pressure: Some employees need pressure – they even thrive on it. Some employees feel resentful and frustrated when pressurized. The manager needs to identify what works in each case and create the right level of pressure (or the absence of it)

• Resources: The right resources should be made available to the learner – learning materials, instructors, peer groups etc. And it is important to remember that time is a resource too. In a hurry to get employees trained faster, managers should not take shortcuts and impose unreasonable targets. Such targets could frustrate employees, cause burnout or may necessitate costly re-work. Even worse, it may lead to employees quitting their job.

• Chunking: An employee faced with a new project/job role might feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of the task that lies ahead. Breaking up a big project/learning activity into small, manageable chunks is a great way to prevent an employee from getting overwhelmed. Skilled managers are very good at breaking up a complex project into manageable portions, with clear milestones along the way. Chunking thus eliminates or minimizes learning anxiety. When the anxiety is minimized, the learning happens faster.

• Identifying the employee’s learning style: It is common knowledge that different people learn through different methods. Some learn by reading, some by doing. A good manager should let the employee learn in a manner that suits the latter’s natural inclination.

• Rapport: If a manager has a good rapport with an employee in his/her team, it certainly helps. Rapport is something built up over a period of time and not overnight. Good rapport facilitates clear, honest communication in an atmosphere of trust and respect. It allows the employee and the manager to talk frankly and fearlessly. Conversely, absence of a good rapport is a huge barrier to effective communication – and hence a barrier to learning.

Learning vs. Training

What is learning? Most people associate learning with a tangible skill – like driving, swimming, creating macros in Microsoft Excel, etc.

However, I believe that the term learning applies equally to a change in habit, a change in mindset or paradigm. It also applies to a change in perspective. This is a little hard to visualize for most people. For example, you will often hear people saying things like – “I have recently learnt Japanese” or “I have learnt how to drive a car”. But it is much rarer to hear a person say, “I have learnt to look at prison convicts in a new light” or “I have learnt to watch my temper and control it” or “I have learnt that my teenage son is a worthwhile person instead of an irritating nuisance”. This kind of learning is much harder to achieve because it requires a high level of self-awareness. Also, I like to use the term “learning” with reference to a new habit – for example, “I have learnt to exercise 3 times  a week on a regular basis” or “I have learnt to quit smoking”.

So, in summary, I like to use the word “learning” to describe a process of positive change – be it the acquisition of theoretical knowledge, or a tangible skill, a new habit or new perspective. 

How is “training” related to “learning” ? I see training as a means to achieve learning. In order to learn something, it is necessary to train or practice. For a short-tempered person to learn the habit of calmness, he needs to train himself to watch for the symptoms of a rising tantrum and train himself to manage his emotions.

However, learning can happen without training as well.  A child who gets his fingertip singed in a flame learns abruptly (and effectively) that fire is dangerous. The amateur stock market investor who risks his all on a particular gamble and ends up going bankrupt learns without training the importance of due diligence in investing.

Whether we realize it or not, we are learning all the time. Nature will ensure that learning happens –even if we resist it with all our might. By being humble, being proactive and by learning consciously, we can learn more, learn faster and learn more efficiently. Also, by learning consciously, we can avoid much of the pain involved in learning through hard knocks.

I love this line (I learnt it in my previous company!): The future belongs to those who learn.

The trainer’s self-introduction

I consider a trainer’s self-introduction to be very important for the following reasons:

•  It is an opportunity for the trainer to establish credibility. Once a trainer has established credibility, it is very easy to command the attention of the audience. Conveying the subject matter becomes easier. 
• It sets the tone for the training session and provides a natural segue for the trainer to launch into the next topic – which could be a round of introductions from the trainees (if the class size is reasonably small to allow this) or the subject matter itself.

     My thoughts on a good introduction:

• It should be formal, but not pompous.
• The trainer needs to clearly convey the credentials that justify his/her being a trainer for the course.
• As far as possible, the credentials should be quantified. For example, instead of saying ,“I have a lot of experience in this area”, you might say, “I have 15 years of experience as a customer support engineer and that has given me a lot of learning opportunities in the area of handling difficult customers”
• A little bit of humor certainly helps and puts the audience at ease.
• You can talk about your personal interests and hobbies, but spending too much time of those can distract the trainees and take their focus off.

Handling difficult training situations: When your trainees know more than you do

I was once in a very awkward situation as a trainer.

I started off my career as a field support engineer. During my first days on the job, I was trained by a very senior engineer who mentored me well and taught me a lot of skills needed to survive on the job. A couple of years later, I became a technical trainer and started teaching courses for other field support engineers.

Once it so happened that I was teaching a course that was a mandatory certification requirement for all field engineers in my line of work. And guess what! My former mentor and a couple of his equally senior colleagues were “students” in my class. It was the equivalent of a high school physics teacher having Newton, Einstein and Galileo as his/her students.

Every student in my class knew that they all knew more than I did. And I was myself acutely aware of this fact. Luckily for me, they were all very understanding. Rather than wasting everyone’s time and energy, we decided to convert the class into a knowledge sharing session rather a one-sided lecture. However, for compliance requirements, they agreed to submit the required assignments.

So how do you handle it, when you find that your students are all much more knowledgeable than you are ?

My thoughts:

• First, don’t get embarrassed or flustered. No one knows everything. It is perfectly normal for even a trainer to run into people that are more knowledgeable and accomplished.
• Be willing to learn. Be humble. Do not try to impose your authority as a trainer on your students who know more than you do. This will only irritate the audience. Even if your knowledge of the subject is not as good as theirs, they will respect you if you are authentic. But if you try to hide behind a façade of false authority,  you will lose whatever respect you might have had J
• Change your approach: If you have a class of beginners who are new to the subject, you can be the “Sage-on-the-stage”. But if you have a class of experts as your trainees, let go of your ego and be the “Guide-on-the-side”. Be more of a facilitator and help everyone learn off each other. Remember that there is nothing disgraceful about this. You are also enriching yourself by learning from the experts. Gather as much as you can and then pass it on to your future students.

Handling difficult training situations: When you need to deviate from your prepared outline

Let me share with you a real experience that I once had when I was teaching a course on problem solving.

In my class I had a diverse group of trainees from various disciplines like Finance, HR, logistics, engineering, etc. According to the instructor’s guide for the course, I needed to walk the trainees through a case study involving an engineering problem. This case study would form the backbone of the course. But many of the trainees were non-technical and I quickly realized that if I continued with the engineering problem as a case study, I would completely lose the attention of most of my class. The class would end up a complete waste of time.

I knew I had to deviate from the canned script. So I told the trainees to individually identify a problem in their own work to use as a case study. I told them this class would be an opportunity for them to brainstorm and solve a problem bothering them at work. This immediately got the attention of the trainees. Some of the problems they identified were very interesting and relevant. For example, one of them told me that he had to attend conference calls at 4 AM on several days of the week to liaise with our headquarters in another country. As we proceeded through the class, he was able to come up with several thoughts on how to solve/manage the problem. He told me he had never had the time or opportunity to think about this problem in a calm and structured manner. Personally I felt very satisfied that I was able to create some value and make life better for trainees through the class.

What did I learn from this experience?  As a trainer you must have the mental flexibility to deviate from your prepared outline and improvise in order to keep the energy levels in the class high.