It is more important to keep your peer happy than your boss

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Keeping your colleague happy is very important because you don’t want to fail in your job, you do not like having a stressful environment at office, and for sure you would not want to spend your time thinking what the next door guy is cooking up against you. Your manager has an obligation to be nice with you, to accommodate you and protect you but your colleague does not have any obligation what so ever. Hence it is extremely crucial to have good relations with your colleagues for positive reasons like below

·         To succeed : No matter how good you are , you still need a lot of support from your peers, it could be just a positive word about work to standing by you to support in your work.

·         To learn & grow: Most of the learning comes from colleagues by seeing them do things we will learn what not to do. We will acquire new skills with the help of them , good relationships lasts beyond the current organization – they will take you where they go or can refer you in a good place when you are looking out for change

·         To have a companion: We may be the strongest person on earth but – we still need someone to talk, we need a shoulder to lean on  a difficult day – to share things which we can’t share with our boss.

Am I saying you should keep pleasing everyone around?

No, one does not need to try hard to keep everybody happy; you don’t need to be nice all the time after all that is not the purpose why we are working.it is advisable to invest enough time to understand our colleagues well and operate. The ones who are difficult to manage or create obstacles on your way needs to be handled in a different  manner – flag it up to your superiors proactively if you see a potential threat, trouble on your way. Going back to the point of how we can maintain good relations without being submissive or trying to please everyone all the time. The naked fact we should remember here is our colleague also needs good relations with us; he/she also needs a friend at work. Hence we are playing on an equal field.

There are 2 ways of building good relations at work.

Avoid clashes: First let us think why clashes take place? Very few times we end up having a confrontation with a colleague because we are fighting for credit over one thing, or we may be competing for one promotion. But most of the times it is because of the reason that we don’t understand each other’s requirements well. “Transactional analysis” helps a lot to manage this particular problem. Look at the below image if anyone of them does not match we end up disliking our colleague.

Someone wants to be regarded as an intellect, other might like to be seen as a cool dude once we understand this part it becomes easy to sail through. Based on this we can build our conversations and rest all will fall in place slowly.

Understand who you are dealing with?

Everyone is not the same person, there are few people we need to be really careful of, and there are other we can just get along really well. I am classifying them to the below categories there could be more – this is purely based on my encounters and experiences so far.

Snakes: Very dangerous people, by nature manipulative, they do not need a real cause to fight, on a slight indication of danger, it could be completely wrong indication also – they will bite you. One should be sharp enough to identify this kind of colleagues early on make sure you have “stick” that they are sacred of – it may be your good relationship with your manager, or your ability of influencing bigger people in the organization – make sure they are aware of your influence so that they are careful and will think before targeting you. The below are must when dealing with people like this, I have seen this type in my career so far.

·         Maintain hello– how are you? Relationship – do not go any further, if you need to work with them closely, make sure a third person is involved and is aware of what is happening.

•         Never share your personal interests, opinions on others
•         Never talk about your failures and your weakness
•         Talk about your success if possible tell how you taught a lesson to a cunning fellow before

Foxes: Have all the abilities, smart, can work on their own that is the reason other will get attracted towards them initially only to the disappointment of knowing they are really dangerous and contagious. – Cribs all the time. Brags about themselves ever as if they are bearing planet earth on their shoulders. Always look for an opportunity to grab credit from others. Has foul mouth about anyone – can give any information about all most everyone but don’t fall pray – if you are getting along well closely with them – they might be telling others (Including your manager) that he/she guiding you all through. Not good for your career and life, at the same time you cannot afford to have him as an enemy unless you yourself is one like him, or a Tiger/Lion.

•          Massage his/her ego and giggle within yourself
•         Feed him/her with non-controversial information just have the relation going on
•         And finally do not try to do anything except the above J

Birds: Most of the people will fall into this group, they are not happy neither unhappy. Minds there work and go home. They don’t fail in their job and will not exceed exceptionally also. Very good people to trust and go along with – that is there maximum expectation too. They will stop talking to you the moment they realize that they are not important for you. But will not cause any harm. Good to have a colleague like this – you can go on on a party, movie and enjoy – they will not talk about work too much. But also remember they are not powerful people – will be of no help if you want to climb up the ladder.

Lions: Ambitious, hardworking people, very powerful – they know where their prey is, do not harm people unnecessarily but are capable of doing so if you scratch them on the wrong side. Very open in their agenda; you will know when they are hitting you. Good to be friends with them as long as you treat them like lions – massage there ego, talk hunting, exhibit ambitions. If not they will treat you like an insect. Never fight them until you are a lion yourself and also please be cautioned if you are a bird or if whole team is filled with birds you might mistake a fox for a lion.

Sages : Know it all people – they are really knowledgeable, but often get in to the filed they are not quite sure of too. Does not harm anybody – not interested in completion or in day to day politics. If your manager is also this type – he/she can be Lion too. So not to fight with. Make most of their presence, ask for a suggestion they will be over critical sometimes but it does help. If you do not ask for their opinion they will try to grill you in open forums. Very easy to manage them by just asking for their advice on things you are doing.

There is nothing wrong with managers, just that they aim a completely wrong target

Image courtesy - Google

A group of people under any name needs some one to manage them,we all are conditioned to the model,even the best Self -motivated person in the world also needs some kind of management over him to guide what is right or wrong- in his case his/her inner sense might do the majority of the job but for rest of us we need managers and that is the reason there are number of managers you find at every corner of each office.The irony is most of these managers are stressed  and predominantly this is caused by their own team members or by his boss.Even more ironic angle to this is most of the team members are stressed too and without any hesitation they say these stressful conditions are created by their managers who are  impractical,push them too hard and what not. A very few managers are respected by their teams rest all managers are called "Damagers".

So from both the sides tension exists, this is a result of sheer confusion for which managers must be hold responsible though are some genuine complaints from managers.Mangers get frustrated with things like below.

• Team not getting up to speed
• Lack of commitment
• No updates till the last moment
• Escapism
• Code of conduct

The above all are genuine, they do exist and that is the reason manager exists to manage all these calamities and get things done.Managers are supposed to resolve all these issues, this is the fundamental reason why teams need managers it is funny that managers complain about same things that they are supposed to solve because they mistake the whole purpose of their job, I've done that few occasions too, it is important for managers to come out of this situation as quickly as possible.

Team's success is a byproduct - don't run for it crazily

Manager is not a robot or a computer programmed to achieve success and success is not fruit juice which comes out of a mixer after grinding.Manager should focus on getting few things right in first place before worrying about results.Manager must be a catalyst, The very purpose why manager exists is

• To cater to the emotional needs of the team to get psychological balance in the team
• To be the best knowledge base,enable team to leverage on his skills and knowledge
• To channelize efforts in the right direction

"Individuals" are the only reality, rest all - Team, Company they are all just names

There is no specific tantra, or code for team management except few fundamentals remains same.There is no such thing called team management, we manage individuals that eventually becomes what we call "Team Management", so team never fails or succeeds it is individuals who does.So to ensure you are on track managers need to do a "Talent mapping" within the team and assign tasks based on that, if the KRA's/KPA's are same for the whole team members you have a fundamental flaw, just because they are in one team they shouldn't be performing same tasks, most of the manager make the mistake  of assigning all tasks to all in the name of having balance in team - this is extremely wrong.You team members should complement each other not compete among themselves.By assigning same jobs you are asking your team members to compete which leads to non-cooperation among them.This should be avoided strictly.

Most productive time in life spent at work - manager remember that!

All of us spend our most efficient time at work, that is when our senses are at their best, we can think better, have the energy to execute things better during this time.Everyone excepts the return from this time, your team members are no exception to this.While it is crucial to reward appropriately,recognize them when done well, the most important manager needs to do is "Allow them to have satisfaction for the day"  put every effort to ensure your team member is not going home with stress, that gives them a sense accomplishment, it brings peace in to their mind.It reduces cribbing, dissatisfaction which in turn leads to harmony in the team.

You are not running for an election - Don't hesitate to be assertive

The most frequent and difficult dilemma every manager face everyday is being nice VS being right. In search of "nice manager" image most of the managers pardon fatal wrong doings of Team members, without

realizing the fact of one small drop of poison spoiling a pot of milk.If a non-performing team member is surviving for long it set ups a wrong precedence, it builds a way towards team's failure.Also note the fact that strict managers never lose their team members but incapable manager does.The so called worst managers in any organization are not the ones who fired non-performers but they are the ones who could not take decision on them, this gives strength to non-performers, the not desired ones to further malign manager;s ability,character as a result nobody listens to the manager.Be assertive, be fast.

You are paid to take the blame, not to rule!

This is another critical one that no manager can afford to miss.Managers do a great justice when he protects his team member by providing a cushion to them especially when someone fails.Attribute your success to the team publicly, you would need to make a point on what you would expect them to do in one on one discussions.Ironically every time something has been delivered the credit goes to manager and when something goes wrong it will be cascaded down to a particular individual.Get this right.

Success will be a byproduct of all these.

Why does social media matters a lot for any recruitment team?

Courtesy - Google

Today there are only two types of recruitment teams – one who is supportive of social media usage, talks, eats, breaths LinkedIn and Facebook, the other one who rejects it on the face of it, considers social media is a time waste. In both cases one would like to know the fundamental matrix called - what percentage of your total hires come from social media? You won’t find much difference in the statistics of both the parties. Then why so much of cry and debate happening on the same topic. It is because of the reason that both the sides ignore the intrinsic value addition by social media. As a recruitment team you are always prone to measuring value addition through number of hires, the same cannot be the parameter for measuring social media because of the fundamental reason that none of the most popular social media tool is designed specifically for recruitment, and they have not evolved as full pledged recruitment tools yet.

Intrinsic value addition has more worth than the extrinsic like filling open positions. Creating a pool of potential applicants is more valuable than just hiring one candidate. When you have good online social media presence, when you keep your corporate pages updated you will create a circle of people who keep knowing about your company, they won’t stop there – they will further talk to people spread the message – unconsciously they are your brand ambassadors – this will result in reduced effort in selling the company’s brand to candidates. Imagine a recruiter calling a candidate and getting to hear “I’ve not heard of this company” that whole process gets painful, conversion ratios will be bad, attracting the top talent will be even more painful.

Why I think recruitment teams must pay attention to Social media.

We are living in a world where people Google

The year 1998 changed the way internet is used, from then to now we have a close of everyone who consolidates and gives reliable information about any topic across the world in many languages. You cannot hide what you are doing on the internet; if you hide also others won’t reserve their comments about you. It is not a troublesome research project anymore to know more about a particular company - Google gives you accumulated data about every organization. Now it is the job of recruitment team to make that cumulative data look good.

Now imagine if one is trying to search your company on internet and it only throws just a company web site, your company does not exist for the younger generation. They will be interested to see your Facebook page, Wikipedia, Twitter and what not. If you are not on social media you have not arrived or you are not a company for younger generation. No company can afford to land in this kind of unfortunate situation.

What you say on your Website is no more your brand

When a recruiter calls a candidate, after the call candidates used to get on to the website to know more about the company, the trend is changing candidates now get onto mouthshut.com or Glassdoor.com to see what employees have to say about the company. This is the case even you are the biggest brand in the world, people still would want to see what has been written on social media, candidates will be curious to know about a particular aspect- even if you are Microsoft or a Google, they would still want to know about that particular team they are going to Join. Hence what you are claiming about your company on website will become less valuable than what people had written on these sites.it is a natural law of behavior – people believe a third party’s feedback than your own words.  And another important thing is as an organization you might overlook these sites, but people who worked with or left you will not – they will write their comments in most of the cases they will be writing negative comments to avenge out their frustration, hence it is important to companies to neutralize these dynamics with active social media presence. Otherwise over a period of time you will become a bad organization on the internet and you won’t even realize it. As result organization’s ability to attract best talent will diminish.

Your Job site will give you access to candidates in your country – Social media is boundary less

Any jobsite whether Indian, European, American they will focus on the local markets. We will have access to candidate’s database in a particular region but LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter has no boundaries, reach is bigger. Whenever you are working on a market intelligence project or hiring for leadership roles the help from LinkedIn is priceless. Jobsites might give you information regarding salary ranges and other stuff, but they can’t do the job of social media sites of providing a hawk eye perspective. Let us take an example – if you would like to know the companies who are doing extensive work in HTML 5: LinkedIn will be a great tool for the same because the moment you search with HTML 5 it will give you details around

• ·         Individuals working on HTML 5
• ·         Consulting firms offering services on HTML 5
• ·         Huge network of individuals working on the same technology
• ·         Groups for HTML 5

All of these details at one place and you will have less problem of fake experience – this can’t be done by any jobsite.

Recruitment teams are reluctant to use social media extensively -because

>They always tend to measure social media in terms of number hires made

>Social media recruitment is slow

>Corporate page subscription fee for sites like LinkedIn are higher than the regular Job sites

But when you compare return on investment it makes more sense to get active on Social media, once we reach the break even point in terms of money rest all will be a great bonus

Take an example if you have spent 4 lakh rupees on LinkedIn subscription all you need to look at whether you were able close positions equaling 3 times of the subscription. If you have done it, you are getting the entire branding for free.

Other social media sites are just for free like Facebook,Twitter it makes sense to make most of it and build a consistent content across all sites. Candidates will depend on websites only for factual information rest all like culture, Performance management, and compensation for all these key details they depend on social media and we all know these aspects play a vital role in candidate’s decision making.