Attitude, Adaptability and Anticipation are must for
Success
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
The Soccer Legend Pele had rightly said that success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do. We all are always keen to succeed in our career/life and are expected to develop required skill sets, a positive attitude, staying calm during a disturbing situation, listening to others and put in determined effort to achieve a defined goal. It is equally important to control anger and be tactful so that others do not take your behaviour as arrogance. Whether you are a school teacher, a professor in college/university, site engineer, designer, production engineer, law practitioner, press reporter, marketing representative, sales manager, doctor or any such employee, you have to deal with human beings who are very demanding and in a hurry. You have to put in 100% efforts in performing your role in the workplace and also carry out responsibility towards family. This necessitates a balanced approach to ensure peace and happiness at home and high productivity at workplace. There are basic principles of human/personal management given succeeding paragraphs. If followed sincerely, these will improve your control on your body and mind to enhance your productivity and get better cooperation from others.
■ Accept Others as They Are. To have proper alignment to organizational goal, one should accept ground reality, rules, regulations and policies of the government as well as for instructions or procedures/processes and business practices of the organization. This will make you happy with your present position/status without conflict with the organization or people at the workplace. You will get more time to focus your mind and energy on the job/task at hand and enhance productivity leading toward success. Likewise, accept your parents, relatives and seniors as they are since they are your well-wishers who want you to rise. If you cannot change the world, change yourself. For this, you should be adaptive to the environment around you.
■ Acknowledge Others Contribution. When someone gives you support you must acknowledge and thank him/her. When you are standing in a queue on a bank counter, you borrow a pen from someone to write a cheque and as you finish, you return the pen automatically saying “Thank You.” Try this on your team members, at home – spouse, parents, brother/sister or in-laws or children. We often take them for granted and forget basic courtesy of thanking. Thanking costs you nothing but it pleases another person. Such courtesy pays rich dividend even in normal correspondence, say an official letter, memo, email or greeting card/message. It also relates to returning a greeting say “Good Morning” in response to “Good Morning.” Try to thank 2–3 people (anybody) daily and see the effect in 15 days.
■ Action It is a must to make things happen. As Rabindranath Tagore has rightly said-
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
One must take appropriate and timely action to complete an assigned job. You know “God helps those who help themselves.” Inaction breeds laziness and may cause depression. Be active, rather proactive and get into action. Those who act are the winners or leaders and those who keep thinking, hesitating, vacillating or looking around for outside help, remain stranded/spectators. Your plans must be actionable and you must act in the right way, at right time and, at the right place. If you do not act in time, others will act and you will be late to react. Your all ideas and plans must be actionable else they remain theoretical exercise.
■ Admit Your Mistake. If you are wrong in your action, admit your mistake unconditionally, whether you are in the workplace, party, club, picnic, classroom or home. As a senior or junior, as parent or spouse or children one could be wrong/harsh when he/she actually should not be so. At times. It may happen in a hurry or just as an argument. Saying sorry is not retreat or defeat or weakness but wisdom and maturity to patch up. Try it and see the effect in just 15 days. People will be more comfortable working around you and have better trust leading to a good work environment and your success.
■ Appreciate Other’s Achievement. We all expect someone to admire us, cheer us up and enable us to perform well. A team leader/manager should not criticize people beyond a point as it would hurt another person and he/she will become immune to it. It is a good gesture to appreciate/admire even for a small achievement by your team member. Do remember the good old saying
“criticize in private and praise in public.”
Do appreciate what others are doing instead of finding faults or criticizing to pull them down. If you give support to them, they too will do for you. Try this principle at your workplace and at home and you will notice that within 15 days your work environment would have improved.
• Acquire by Hard Work. Getting resources as ready-made stuff (inherited) does not give you some satisfaction/strength as you would get through yourself working hard to acquire it. Therefore do not look around for help or wait for lady luck to smile on you for wealth, property or status. It is like working hard for four years and passing eight examinations (semester wise) and earn a degree. Similarly, to climb the corporate ladder you have to sweat out for moving from one rung to another.
• Accessible to Team. As a manager/team leader, you should be easily accessible to team members as this improve mutual trust which is most essential for team success.
• Acceptable to Team. A good leader leads from the front and has willing followers. When you come from an outside organization or get promoted from within the organization, you must quickly align yourself with the team in your new role. It will ensure that you are easily and quickly accepted as a leader.
• Accommodating. You maybe right but others around you may not be. You need to accommodate them and their ideas too. This will encourage the team to do well and bring in more ideas for improvement. Even if you are to reject someone’s idea/viewpoint, you need to be tactful in suggesting alternative which convinces the team that you are taking a holistic view.
• Accountable. As a manager/team leader or executive you are accountable for the execution of given task/job and also for your KRA’s, Likewise, you should insist that those working under you are held accountable in their committed KRAs. Remember accountability like responsibility cannot be shared or delegated, only power can be shared/delegated.
• Adaptive. It is a good quality to be flexible and adaptive to the work environment in which you are positioned. You must make use of what is available and quickly adapt the relevant part, instead of reinventing the wheel and starting from scratch. You should be aligned with the goals of your organization and your seniors. This approach will make you more visible in the eyes of those who matter.
• Agent for Change. Change is the spice of life in all walks of life. There is general inertia to change of procedure/process among most employees in any field/sector. It is the bounded duty of manager/team leader to accept the change and be an active agent for change, Technologies, business models and lifestyle is changing fast and so you should be changing to remain current.
• Aim and Follow Through. You must have a definite aim/goal in life and concentrate all energies to achieve it. Aimless working and too much talking lead to dissipation of energy and reaching nowhere. People, who aim high and decide the trajectory before shooting the arrow, hit the target. If you do not aim well, you cannot beat your competitors.
• Alignment to the Organization. There should be s.hared vision and mission to achieve cost-efficient success. As you often observe that if wheels of a vehicle are not properly aligned, the vehicle speed and stability are adversely affected. Similarly, if team members do not share a common goal, there will be delays and cost over-runs. There should be a common motto and quality slogan where all team members speak good about the organization,
• Alert to Emerging Situation. You are to be alert at all times in every job, every time, and on every day. An alert person can look ahead and respond appropriately to any risk/issue. If you are alert you can be proactive and will not be surprised by any emerging situation,
• Anger and Arrogance. Your control of mind and body is most essential to stay calm and reflect good behaviour in the workplace or at any public place. An angry person often loses his/her balance and tends to take irrational decisions or make unpleasant utterances. If you become angry about any small issue, you will lose the respect of team members and all those who matter. Keeping anger in your heart/mind for a long time will increase voids among friends/teammates and can be also caused for your ill health, like high blood pressure or a stomach disorder. When in a difficult situation, take long breaths, remain pleasant and smile away else go to the gym and box out your anger on a dummy.
• Anticipate and Be Proactive. As a manager/team leader you got to anticipate coming events and prepare to respond appropriately. You should not be taken by surprise and then react, which would be like firefighting action. By proper anticipation, you can mitigate certain types of risks.
• Argumentative. As a manager/team leader you should affectively put across your argument/viewpoint and if it is a good point, it may be accepted during the discussion. Do not get into argument with team members, peers and seniors. Those who are argumentative and fail to correct their behaviour will lose their popularity and friends.
• Assert and Showcase Achievement. To succeed in today’s world you should not wait and watch for events to happen by themselves. It is good to let others know how much you know and must not expect your seniors to know all about your worth to reward you appropriately. You need to showcase how good you are.
• Assignment and Competency. A task assigned must be done with full energy and sincerity. As a manager/team leader, a task should be assigned to team members as per their choice/competence. They will perform best since they will be in their comfort zone.
• Attitudinal Change. A positive attitude is a force multiplier. A person with a positive attitude has no fear of any situation/task and takes it as a challenge or opportunity. The one who has a negative attitude takes the task as a burden or problem and keeps sulking and cribbing. A person with a positive attitude keeps trying and retrying till he/she succeeds while a person with a negative attitude keeps criticizing organization/team, grumbling and gives up soon. You can’t hide your attitude as your subordinates, peers and even superiors will notice it in no time. To improve your attitude, you need to practice control of body and mind, do introspection and be in the company of positive thinking people.
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar
“Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” – Swami Sivananda
Dr Sarbjit Singh
To read more, you may refer to my book/ebook
“A2Z- 26 Steps for Assured Success”, available on, www.amazon.com
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