You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 12th, 2007.
I hope you see what I mean. Here are some more instances of incorrect English:
Incorrect: Can I take this call?
Correct: May I take this call?
Incorrect: Can I help you?
Correct: May I help you?
Incorrect: The number of people on Indian streets are mind-boggling.
Correct: The number of people on Indian streets is mind boggling.
Incorrect: She is my cousin sister.
Correct: She is my cousin.
Incorrect: I had a bad experience yesterday night.
Correct: I had a bad experience last night.
Incorrect: This class comprises of 50 students.
Correct: This class comprises 50 students.
Five things to do
Read more. Not just newspapers and magazines, novels too.
Refer to the dictionary and a grammar book (like Wren and Martin), while reading. Make it a habit.
Do crosswords. They help to increase one’s vocabulary and also urge you to think.
Grab every opportunity to speak English — with friends, colleagues — even to yourself!
Listen to people who speak well. Watching channels like BBC and CNN is a good bet.
pradip asked, pls suggest how to improve the pronunciation and fluecy. I am comparatively good in grammar and vocabulary.
Charanpreet Singh, Director, Formal Education, IMS answers, Hi. I guess there are four things you can do with any language — read, write, listen and speak — in your case, I feel that listening to people who speak well and grabbing every opportunity to speak would be helpful.
Munir asked, Hi Charanpreet, I am working as a software engineer in a software firm. I can communicate in English but I don’t have command over english. Many times it becomes difficult for me to manage such situations. Also, I need to interact with UK, US clients and it becomes very difficult to understand their accents. Could you please give me some tips to improve my english? Thanks.
Charanpreet Singh, Director, Formal Education, IMS answers, Hi Munir — you are not alone, but that doesn’t solve the problem, does it? Feel free to speak the language — that is key to gaining confidence and fluency. Also, since you are a software engineer you would be analytical by nature — use this strength to make your communication well-structured. People understand structure even if your language skills are not the best. Accent are a different ballgame altogether — you just need to listen more attentively and watch American films!
Agreed, it is not as big as the Indian Railways. But with a diplomatic presence in 189 countries with 267 embassies, there are few organisations in the world that are as large as the United States’ Department of State.
And there are few people who know more about managing such a big operation than US Undersecretary of State for Management Henrietta H Fore, who helms 11 management bureaus and offices that have 7,200 fulltime employees and a combined budget of $3.6 billion.
Some management insights and tips from Fore, who was in Mumbai on Monday, March 5, to address students at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Vile Parle, northwest Mumbai.
Use of creative recruitment tools:
Fore said the State Department constantly looks out in different fields for people it can hire. “We are looking to people who are midway in their private sector careers and who may wish to try out foreign affairs and see if it is a good fit for them.”
The State Department, like any good global entity, also reaches out to foundations and corporations and appeals to them to sponsor executives. Fore said the response has been quite positive and the result will be a win-win situation for the corporations and the State Department.
Equip your people with the right skills:
The State Department thinks its people are its best asset and makes sure that they have the right skills to carry out its mission. “The department has its own university — the Foreign Service Institute — that provides training in languages, leadership and management and country skills,” Fore said.
The State Department has more than 400 classrooms courses and a distant learning programme, which includes several thousand commercial courses. Over 2,000 diplomats use these courses, which enable them to be familiar with various cultures when they step out.
Adapt to change; look differently as the world changes:
Fore agreed that the State Department’s current global posture does not reflect the new front lines of diplomacy in transitional countries as in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s bold initiatives of ‘Transformational Diplomacy’ requires we work with our partners in the world to build and sustain democratic, well governed states,” she said.
In order to achieve such a transformation, she said it is important to focus on:
A global repositioning of diplomats;
Regionalising US functions for greater efficiencies and rightsizing its presence overseas; and
Localising US presence with smaller posts and virtual posts.
Rightsizing:
Fore said rightsizing a nation’s presence overseas and investing on training and operational readiness and knowledge management are the keys.
“Rightsizing and regionalisation are key to transformation,” she added. Conducting regular studies would also help. “As managers, you must appreciate that these studies are good ways to reassess staffing needs, goals and accomplishments,” Fore told the management students.
IT initiatives:
This is the biggest asset for running any global operation, 24/7/365, Fore felt. “IT initiatives go hand-in-hand with your regional operations. Even if it is a small world already, there are ways in which we can get closer to each other. We must come up with approaches where we can capture culture, we have a feel of a place. This is something that needs to be thought about and innovated,” she said.
Pair policy and economic considerations:
For whatever policy decision you take, make sure that you have a financial segment to it.
“The key to doing this is to rationalise how you allocate your human and financial resources. Have more people who understand the policy environment,” she said.
Encourage entrepreneurs:
Fore felt any big global entity must encourage entrepreneurship.
By doing so, she said, both the entrepreneurs and the global business stand to gain.
“They drive skills and training. They might be small, but they teach you a lot about the region and help you understand the ground realities better,” she added.
Give something back:
Summing it all up, Fore said running a global operation is to do business, serve your country in come capacity, and involve yourself in academia. “It is not just about taking profits from what you do,” she told the students,”you must also give out something to the world.”
If you want to get into business, forget your ego.
If you don’t love to make money, do not start a business.
Yes, a humble attitude and a love for money are very two important attributes of a successful entrepreneur — according to Subroto Bagchi, author of The High Performance Entrepreneur-Golden Rules For Success In Today’s World, and co-founder and chief operating officer of MindTree Consulting.
To know more, here’s an excerpt:
Have a question you want to ask?
Entrepreneurship is about egolessness
Many people want to start companies in the prime of their careers, often after winning accolades as professional managers in large companies. That is great, but when you start your own company, you must know that you leave your past behind.
That is easier said that done.
A persons’s corporate success often comes from the power of the chair he sits on. He often underestimates how much he is an extension of that artefact. So, when that person steps out, the world repositions him without his knowing.
People have a hard time coping with the attendant loss of identity. The day you step out of the collared existence of a blue-chip company, you are a mongrel. The first thing you have to do is to forage and run and duck and breed and forage some more.
In all this foraging, you will come up against strangers. Some will love you for reasons you will never be able to fathom. Some will be brutal with you.
I remember fondly a meeting with an irate customer. He demanded that I see him immediately and I took a late-night flight from New York all the way to California and showed up at the appointed time. I stood outside his glass door while he remained busy on the phone for a full forty-five minutes — all the time knowing very well that I was standing there. When he finally showed me in, he did not apologize. The one-hour meeting was largely a one-sided rebuke. He did not offer me a glass of water or a coffee. After I came out, for a fleeting moment, I felt hurt. This man, in my past life would have had to take an appointment to see me –that is what my ego informed me. In the very next moment I realized that this was a set-up destiny to prune me.
I am sure when a rose bush is pruned, it does not like the experience. But without the pruning, it will not give great blooms. In the early years of setting up shop, one has to budget for a lot of pruning.
Sales people learn this early in their careers. Sometimes with reason and sometimes quite mindlessly, people keep them waiting, shut the door on them, or are otherwise rude. As you grow up, you learn to deal with such responses, one way being not to take things personally. Even service engineers learn to deal with rejection. But most people who come from other areas of expertise, specially senior people, become quite shaken when they face such experiences. The worst thing that you could do is return the volley. Sometimes, life is just testing your ability to weather storms. Even if you are entrepreneur material, possessing patience, resilience, empathy and politeness in very difficult situations, the sense of rejection can lead to occasional self-pity. That is the last thing you need in such situations, to even think, ‘when I was a senior executive at my last organization, this man would not dare deal with me like this.’ The ’senior executive’ and your ‘last organization’ are past and best treated as fiction. This man is the current reality and is best treated as someone who may be holding the key to your future.
One day, very early in our existence, I went to General Motors (GM) with Sandeep Sabharwal, at that time a sales director in the US, to make a sales presentation. The fact of the matter is that GM’s IT outsourcing runs into billions of dollars and every large IT services company camps inside and outside GM’s Detroit office. The giant EDS, a business and technology solutions company, was born out of GM. And here was I, with less than 500 people and under $20 million in size, making a spirited pitch to explain why we were good enough for them. After a half-hour of involved presentation, I asked the gentleman from the purchase department what he thought of our proposal. He cleared his throat and said. ‘You are so small that GM could chew you and spit you out before you knew it’. I laughed, but inside it hurt.
Sandeep and I stepped out, brought ourselves brownbag lunches and headed out to the next port of call. We were to meet someone at the Automobile Association of America (AAA). It took us some serious ego massages to be able to repeat the dog-and-pony show at the AAA, where too, in all probability, the prospect was ready to chew us up and throw us out. As we settled into the conference room with some effort to raise the spirit, I again started to explain who MindTree was and what it was about. To my surprise, the client just took over and told us that he knew about us and how high in his esteem we were as an organization. He had learnt all about us from his previous stint at Citibank, during which he had come to India as part of a delegation. He had met Ashok very briefly and was absolutely sold on MindTree. It was balm on a bruised ago after the rejection at GM. Sandeep and I told ourselves that our man at the AAA was the reality and the gentleman at GM was just another bad sales call.
Shortly after, I learnt that the gentleman at AAA had left his job. Another corporate reorganization! That part, as of today, we are still to do business with AAA. The gentleman at GM is probably still there somewhere but through some other opening, we actually do business with one of the GM companies. So, acceptance and rejection are equally transitory, result in equally unpredictable outcomes and must be treated with equanimity, without involving your ego in the results.
Finally, another point about egolessness. Till yesterday, you flew business class, had a secretary make appointments for you and checked in at the choicest hotels. When you start out on your own, for a long time you will have to forget all tat.
Investor money is meant to bring in customers, build and deliver products and services and generate cash before you start leading a life of such luxury. So, being economical with your expenses becomes critical to success. Six years into MindTree, none of us fly business class — with the exception of Ashok. All of us pick hotels at $50 or less on priceline.com whenever we travel overseas.
While we do all that, our colleagues whom we left behind in earlier organization are entitled to great creature comforts. We know that postponed gratification is the essence of ownership. Hence, we do not compare ourselves with what we have left behind.
Entrepreneurs love money
If you do not love to make money, do not start a business. You will hear that many times over from me.
I meet a lot of people who love technology, so they want to start a company. I meet a lot of people who tell me that they have earned enough in their life and now want to set up a company to ‘give something back’. None of these people will ever make great entrepreneurs. Sometimes, we think love for money is all about spending power. Some people have disdain for money because they associate money with being consumerist. In the hands of a creator of wealth, it is not always so. Some people use wealth to build more wealth. Some people like to make money so that they can change the state of things around them. Some enjoy the recognition and some just get a sense of high.
Some people have a deep need to build a legacy and see wealth as the way to do so. John D. Rockefeller’s wealth created many legacies in many walks of life. The most memorable contribution made by him was the Rockefeller Foundation that started in 1913. In 2004, the foundation’s assets stood at $2.4 billion, and in that year it disbursed grants, fellowships and programmatic funds worth $124 million. Jamsetji N. Tata, born in a family of clerics, seeded a business empire in 1859, just two years after India’s first war of independence. In 2004 his Tata empire stood at $12.8 billion in size, and spanned 93 companies in seven businesses.
A lesser known fact is that 65.8 per cent of the empire is owned by charitable trusts. The Bill and Melinda Gartes Foundation is arguably the world’s second richest charitable organization with assets that stood at $26.9 billion in 2006. In each of these instances, the founders were guided by a sense of legacy. It became the deep driving desire behind growing their enterprise so as to make their names remembered by posterity. Without affection for wealth, men like Rockefeller, Gates and Tata could not have created their legacy.
In the Hindu pantheon, wealth is granted by a goddess named Lakshmi. She is extremely jealous and possessive. She does not come to those who treat her as if she is incidental. Even if you manage to bring her in on some pretext, mythology has it that she flees at the smallest act of neglect. So, if someone says money is not my prime motivation, know that the goddess is listening.
The Journal of Business Communication published a recent study disclosing that good listeners hold higher-level positions and are promoted more often than those with less effective listening skills. Many executives believe listening skills are vital to the success of an organisation. Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, said that listening could make ‘the difference between a mediocre company and a great company.’
Unfortunately, a number of experts note that managers and executives tend to become better talkers than listeners — because they are used to ‘being listened to’.
God gave us two ears so we could listen more and speak less. This is seldom followed and we end up spending more time speaking and much less actually learning from what was conveyed.
In our fast-moving world, it is easy to miss out on what people say. These six tips can help though.
More tips on how to listen better
One: Observe the listener
Psychologist Jerome Burner of New York University says that people only remember 10 per cent of what they hear, but the percentage is as high as 80 per cent if they can see the listener as well. When we are with a speaker, it important to be involved in the conversation. Concentrate on the listener’s non-verbal signals, such as the body language and facial expression. When we are not with the speaker, other signals play an important role — the speaker’s pitch, intonation, tone, utterance groups and stressed words in sentences. This will help us understand the speaker’s thoughts. If you are a manager, active listening is crucial. Ideally, managers should spend more than 50 per cent of their time listening to what is being said. Try not to broadcast your idea until you have heard everyone.
Two: Be attentive and avoid distractions
Most of the time, we miss out on things because we are either so pre-occupied with our thoughts or busy doing something that isn’t as important as what the speaker has to say. While we are the target audience, it is discourteous not to pay attention to the speaker. Look at the speaker and keep aside everything else. Stop thinking about work, family, your partner, love life or promotions. These things happen when they have to. It might take some of us time to concentrate, but practice makes this easier. Believe that every speaker is equally important. Do not fake attention.
Can you learn from job interviews?
Three: Think, revise and stay interested
When you hear something, it’s easy to revise the key words. Focus on ‘content words’ — those that contain the main content of the sentence. If you have to pass on a message, make sure you understand it, personalise it and get it in action. Some messages need to be passed on verbatim. In such cases, avoid jumbling words; pass it on word for word. Demonstrate that you are interested in what a person is saying even if the delivery is monotonous or verbose. Don’t let your mind wander; your focus should be your listener.
Four: Make notes
Some of us cannot afford to rely on memory, and are too lazy to pen down what we have heard. This leads to skipping important appointments, missing meetings, forgetting important date and ventures. Overall, it leads to loss. Write down what you need to communicate, to whom and by when. No reminder or note is complete without the date and time. If you have an assigned work area or cabin, use post-its with the required details. Focus on ideas, not just facts. Listening only for facts often impedes grasping the speaker’s meaning.
Five: Paraphrase what the speaker says
Paraphrasing is your version of essential information or ideas uttered by the speaker and presented in a new form. This outline focuses on a single main idea. The process that is involved in paraphrasing helps us remember (what we hear) as well. It also creates trust and a speaker learns that you did grasp what he or she said. Reflecting what we hear, to each other, helps give each a chance to become aware of the different levels a speaker and listener may be at. This brings things into the open where they can be more readily resolved. Avoid rushing or interrupting the speaker. Changing the subject is often taken for lack of interest; don’t change it until you are sure the conversation is over. Asking questions to clear the grey areas and to demonstrate interest could prove helpful.
Want to improve your English?
Six: Do not assume
Nothing can be a bigger sin for a listener than to assume. We assume ideas, thoughts, and sometimes even facts and figures. We try to be correct all the time and that blocks learning and the influx of new ideas. Avoid jumping to conclusions and anticipate what a person is trying to say. Imagine yourself in the speaker’s situation and then form a frame of mind. It shows that you welcome what the speaker has to say. Remember the old poem:
A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard
Why can’t we all be like that bird?
Etiquette and polish, both in personal and business settings, are linked to how well we communicate.
Most people think communication is all about speaking and devalue the importance of listening.
And many others don’t realise what a vast difference there is between simply hearing what is being said and really listening.
People who know how to listen learn more, care more, and end up being the ones we want to be around socially as well as professionally.
Want to improve your listening skills?
Understand why you need to listen and remember to practise these tips the next time you conduct a conversation.
Are your eyes listening?
Your eyes are a dead giveaway if you are not listening.
When your mind wanders and you begin thinking of something or someone else, your eyes show your disinterest. And the person speaking to you is well aware that you are not paying attention.
And this is true even if you don’t look away. Blank stares don’t conceal boredom!
How can you know if you are a bad listener?
A good listener uses his/ her eyes and mind while listening.
If you find yourself already formulating your next sentence in your mind while someone is speaking to you, you are doing injustice to the conversation.
You will get more out of the conversation if you understand, comprehend and assimilate what is being said BEFORE responding.
Good etiquette = listening!
Do you make these common listening mistakes?
The difference between being a good listener versus a great listener is using your heart in addition to your eyes and mind while listening.
Do you do this?
~ If a friend tells you something is wrong, you immediately tend to give advice or criticism.
~ If a friend tells you about something wonderful that has happened, you usually chip in with something similar that you have experienced.
Rarely do we share joy or sympathise with pain. Rarely do we just let others speak.
To improve your listening skills, practise with those closest to you.
When family members or friends share their thoughts and feelings, curtail the urge to relate what you hear to one of your own experiences.
What if a conversation bores you?
I believe ‘interested people are interesting’.
Similarly, ‘boring people get bored’.
You don’t need to know a lot about a subject to have a conversation.
You just need to have a desire to learn, understand and make things interesting.
For example, if someone tells you they are a teacher, instead of saying, “That’s nice,” and moving on to the next topic, try to find out why they are teaching, how they decided on this profession and what their current thoughts on teaching are.
Dig deep and create meaningful conversations.
How do I get others to listen to me?
i. Listen more intently, question more, and speak with emotion.
Build interesting conversations instead of one-way lectures.
ii. Engage people while you speak. Ask questions like, “What do you think?” or “Do you agree?”
Try not to speak continuously for long periods. People tend to have short attention spans.
When you do not listen to what others are saying and only care to listen to your own voice, this is an indication that you really do not care for other people’s opinions.
Think about who you really enjoy being around, at work or in your personal life. Usually it is those who really listen and care about you. Are you listening?
Organisations are essentially a collection of relationships, and honesty is one of the most obvious and neglected keys to improving relationships and self-awareness. It is a very valuable, though often overlooked, commodity at the workplace.
When one chooses to be more honest with others, the morale and productivity of the whole team improves in the process. In fact, telling the truth is probably the single most cost-effective and simple way to productivity and employee satisfaction.
However, many employees admit they have told a lie at the office at some time or another, and some have also been caught. “It’s not uncommon for managers to fire employees for being dishonest. Even in the case of a small and seemingly inconsequential lie, a vast majority of managers will be less likely to promote the employee in question,” says Mitali Tyagi, 29, a recruitment consultant with a private firm in Pune.
“Employees in the workplace must realise that even a small hint of dishonest behaviour can tarnish one’s reputation and mar professional success. For example, there are employees who ’steal’ company time by surfing the Internet during working hours or use the company’s equipment for their personal use. They are actually just as guilty of theft as a person who takes money directly out of the company’s account or fibs on an expense report,” says Anuj Raheja, 28, an HR Manager in Delhi.
Common lies at the office
The most common thing employees lie about at work include:
~ Resumes
The credibility counter is activated the minute one submits a CV. “The chronology must be factual and degrees and awards must be correct. The reasons for lying on a resume are generally to make oneself look more attractive to the employer. However, the repercussions are grave — individuals run the risk of losing their job and damaging their career by misrepresenting their accomplishments,” warns Mitali.
Anuj cites an incident: “Upon checking a manager’s file, I discovered the recruitment people had verified his graduate degree but hadn’t checked on his post-graduate degree. Being concerned that the file wasn’t complete, I asked the manager to bring in his original documents. Rather than do that, he resigned. In closing, he admitted he had ‘fibbed’ a little on his resume and, while he did spend some time at the institute in question, hadn’t earned the degree. It was a career opportunity lost because of workplace dishonesty.”
~ References
Workplace dishonesty can raise its ugly head even before an individual joins an organization. Mitali says, “While verifying candidates’ CVs, we have even come across CVs in which the references listed didn’t even know the candidate!”
Anuj has an interesting anecdote to share as well: “During one of our recruitment drives, a colleague popped into my office to tell me that a candidate she was interviewing mentioned that an industry acquaintance of mine had recommended the company to him and had mentioned my name. This candidate possessed all the qualifications for the job and was being seriously considered for the position, until I happened to run into my industry acquaintance who said he had never met the candidate. As a result of the candidate’s dishonesty, he was dropped from consideration.”
~ Assertions made about others
Whatever capacity one holds, their words carry weight that affects others. Gossiping about others or spreading half-truths can brand the individual as untrustworthy and affect his or her promotion. Gossip or betraying confidence can destroy one’s own credibility.
“The reasons for doing this may be as an attempt to promote oneself at the cost of others,” says Mitali. One of the keys to success in the workplace is stimulating trust from one’s colleagues.
~ Withholding information
“Whenever someone avoids a pending issue with a colleague, tells their superior only the good news, or remains silent when they disagree with a proposed initiative, they are withholding information and being dishonest,” says Anuj.
“On an interpersonal level, the reasons for this may be to hold back their real feelings about how a colleague or manager treats them. They may be afraid to speak the truth because they might hurt someone or may be hurt by retribution from someone else. On an organizational level, they may be afraid to be honest about what’s going wrong, such as mistakes or failures that might be connected to them. This could be because they are afraid of being blamed or punished. So instead, they fib.”
~ Feigning sickness
There is probably no corporate soul who hasn’t feigned sickness at one time or another. The reasons for doing it are many, but the repercussions can be serious if one is caught.
~ Covering up a failed project, mistake or missed deadline
Again, the main reason for touting this type of lie is because an individual is afraid. People aren’t upfront when they are afraid. Mitali has some advice: “Don’t ever lie about deadlines. If you know you can’t get a project done by the coming Monday, say that clearly at the beginning. It’s a lot easier on everyone to know what can and cannot be done by when.”
~ Falsifying expense reports
“A common phenomenon, exaggerating expenses is done by employees to extract as much compensation as they can from a company. The reason for this could be possible dissatisfaction with their current package, or plain deceitfulness and irresponsibility,” says Anuj. He cites an example of his senior manager who had to terminate an executive when he discovered the latter had cheated on a group dinner bill he had submitted. The manager was suspicious about the exorbitant amount and had called a couple of the people listed on the report, all of whom denied eating out on that night.
Is honesty always the best policy?
When employees choose to be honest, teamwork and overall productivity also improves. However, there are some situations where ‘dishonesty’ (for instance, in the form of diplomacy) is sometimes better than being blunt, such as when having to appease a colleague, boss or customer. Such situations may actually warrant being ‘dishonest’.
In such cases, you have to weigh the benefits achieved by being honest with those achieved by being dishonest. “Sometimes, to make a team run smoothly, you have to fib to avoid hurting people’s feelings and make them feel like contributors,” says Anuj.
“Sometimes, I say things like ‘I like your suit’ to a person before a presentation or interview, just to boost the other person’s confidence. It may be a lie, but if it helps them do better, it helps the team,” reveals Mitali. Eventually, it all boils down to knowing how to deal with some people’s individual personalities.
