Footprints on the Mountainside

I am often asked and even criticized for being over friendly with clients. Which service provider explains components of a potential invoice and easy ways of doing parts of it themselves with little effort?

A case in point being corporate programme proposals having potential location contacts and a suggestion that a direct negotiation might work out cheaper.

Or adventure sport clients who are basically enthusiastic youth on the look out for tips getting as many tips as they want, contacts and advice to organize their trips themselves and so on?

The way I see it, my purpose is in my skill in the services I provide. I am doing no miracles, but I do what I do exceedingly well. It does me no harm and gains a lot of good will if my client saves some money on the buffers on hotel charges, or if a group of people manage their own tour.

There are clients who don’t want the hassle and will still pay me to do it, and there are people who go away with information so reliable and unique that the next time they go out, they budget to be able to pay me.

Within a few years of the creation of this site, I have over a thousand people subscribing to a newsletter that goes out maybe 4 times a year and stays shut if there is nothing extraordinary to say.

I see this as a strength which, like the open source softwares, is transparent. I have clients suggesting that I start offering some kind of tour, or recommending me to others. Like the open source softwares, it may be silly to offer this kind of information for free, but it brings me great goodwill and I get to be appreciated and hired for the things only I can do.

Seems unprofessional? I see it as warmth and true commitment to my clients needs.

Ugh, this is an extremely wise post from me based on years and years of actual experience. I have learnt that with hugs, what you see, is rarely what you get. I’d like to illustrate some of the salient hug species we see commonly. I say species because after all this time, I have begun suspecting that they have a life of their own.

1. The Affection hug: This is usually initiated by one participant while the other enjoys receiving it. I like this kind of hug and its sub-types: protective, funny and emotional affection hugs.
2. The Space-War hug: This is initiated by the dominant person in a conversation and stated as an affectionate gesture, but one only needs to look at the poor stiff or squirming or uninterested recipient to know how much affection is being conveyed. Such a hug is basically the dominant person’s way of entering the poor victim’s personal space at will. I’d call it an attack.
3. The Obligatory hug: This is the beginning-of-meeting, end-of-meeting, when-we-meet, when-we-part variety of hug - like the Italians saying “ciao” or Spitians saying “Jule” - means everything from “hi” to “Bye”
4. The When-in-doubt hug: This hug is commonly seen after a disagreement or confrontation is mediated by a facilitator, when neither party is comfortable exploring their experience of the conflict. There is a spontaneous need to hug. Such a hug is also called the “Band-Aid” hug.
5. The reflected glory hug: Where you go and hug someone who is very powerful or well-liked, and let the world know that that person is your pal.
6. The sorry hug: Where you hug someone rather than do whatever they want you to do (mostly because hugging takes the lesser effort of the two.
7. The I-can-hug-too hug: The entire world seems to be in love with each other and rather than figure out why, you begin hugging people too.

Ooops! Need to go. Will come back with more info tomorrow.

Feel free to share your own pearls of learning in the comments.

This time, when I had gone to the ISABS National event, I met a lot of people talking about the MBTI instrument. Without any disrespect to Jung, I found the amount of importance given to this “typifying” of people rather alarming.

What does it really mean if I am ENFP or INFP or whatever? Honestly, I took the test quite a few times online, and got my results as ENFP. I thought that was great, until I did a document search for MBTI on my computer and found copy pasted results from a test I had done some time in the past out of curiosity. In those, I was INFJ. I read those results in detail as well, and they were pretty accurate descriptions of me in a different mood.

Really, the way we see the world after a date that ended with an engagement and after a board meeting that ended in a resignation are entirely different. I dare say plenty of answers would change between those two. Yet, there is much importance placed on those tests. An example being two statements made to me by a fellow team member:

“Oh great! You’re an ENFP - I’m a (Something or the other). We will balance each other nicely.” Huh? Did she have a clue to how moody I was, and unlikely to balance out people who tended to “figure me out”?

OR

“I wish we knew the types of everyone. It would help us work together better” And How? We would still be the same bunch of people working together. Does it really take a fancy label to tell us if what we are doing is working or not?

I can understand how tests like this can help people understand other people slightly better. I can’t see how these can be considered anything more than a rough idea - which you get after reading their answers anyway. Just asking someone for their letters would be unreliable, as who knows how accurate their test has been……?

What is it about rhythm that gets to us?

This is a thought that has been on my mind for a long time now. Rhythm soothes, excites and everything in between. Rhythm basically takes us along. Animals will pause to listen to a tune, cultures around the world have music and rhythm as an essential element.

Rhythm brings people together and in sync. How…..? Why DOES rhythm affect us so much?

Ugh. I think it is an occupational hazard for a consultant to feel obligated to have a say on everything, regardless of how inane it sounds. The more broke the consultant, the more desperate he is to say something, anything, as advice. I found this article on CiteMan.

Overcoming Office irritations

My response to this was of such magnitude, that I thought comments wouldn’t suffice, and dragged the whole thing here.

The article opens with seeming to be about employees being unlucky in their employers and suffering from an unhappy work life. Ok, so far, so good. Looks like we have a subject.

Then, we get into generalities about the employers practices and how they are not all bad and also say, “they will definitely not turn ones workplace a place where one wants to be for a long time“!!!???!!! Does that really mean that the employer will want to leave?

Then the whole article does a nose dive and turns into that “ten tips for career success” tone, with a whole load of advice given without any qualification of circumstance whatsoever. What is happening?

We have “An employee must get himself assigned to a project.” Come again? Do employers really leave employees idling around until they get themselves assigned somewhere? Why work at all? Just sit around and enjoy the salary. Then “An employee can tell the employer that to keep ahead of competitors he wants to do research and find out the need of customers and solution to solve their problems. This will give a chance to step out and speak to people and the employee can interact with people on line or simply get busy on the telephone or go and meet them.” No comments.

And, hold-your-breath “Sometimes it is just not the day when one feels like going to work. If that’s the case and if ones work permits then all one has to do is work from home. Do the work in the same fashion as watching TV or play with ones child and send in reports twice in a day. If ones boss resists, explain that this style of working is helping him get the work done efficiently and could not attend work because of minor health problem.” Have I missed something about the corporate world completely? Is being a well taken care of employee about working from home if one doesn’t feel likegoing to work? Does the author realize how condescending it sounds to be explaining to a boss “resisting” this working from home thing? Particularly when speaking of efficiency as the explanation, while doing the work like watching TV or playing with a kid - as in, not with any major effort or concentration?

I’m not continuing with this nonsense, because I just realize I’m copying almost the entire article - each sentence is a masterpiece of “teenager-playing-dream-consultant”, and I just suggest you hop over to the article to believe it.

Is this a training article or what? It sounds more like something from Cosmopolitan - “Ten things to do when you’re bored at work“

It is really a pity there is no author here to quote, but the link leads to the CiteHR. Honestly, I would have expected far better from an HR site, but that just goes to show how the better consultants mint money with competition like this.

I have news for you, Mr. Author, whoever you are. If the employee can genuinely think of working from home, opting in for projects when he feels like it, exchange assignments in the name of multitasking and do any of the many of the things you recommend, it is the employer, not the employee that is unfortunate.

I have just one reply to any whining employee following this nonsense, and even more to the “trainer” who wrote this - If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.