Psychology - A needed skill for Effective Leadership

Psychology - A needed skill for Effective Leadership

Psychology is a required skilled required for People who aspire to be leaders or people who claim to be leaders.

Evaluate your Leadership Skills

It is my personal experience, many people in leadership positions lack this skill. It becomes more apparent that people in Leadership role ask themselves the following questions

1. Have you asked people you mentor time to time - How are they doing? Are they doing good at professional or personal life?

2. Have captured every opportunity to appreciate them for doing anything good?

3. Have you been candid to give very very specific feedback for good and bad observations about them?

4. Do you remember on the top of your mind, what their aspirations are and where are you with helping them reach there?

5. Have you developed a relationship with them, where they are free to let off their steam(anger, frustration) at you? Believe me this is also one of the responsibilities when you lead people

6. Can you describe your people uniquely in a creative and appreciative manner at spur of the moment, say you are introducing them to others?

7. More Important, Do you?

8. Have you taken time to write a truthful recommendation for them?

9. Do you respect people, Who do what is asked of the? They may be rated as average in their appraisal or would not get highest of raises. But do you acknowledge and respect their wish to live life in that manner

10. Do your people feel like sharing good things in their life? Do they come and share things with you themselves?

Now these are only few of dozens more questions you should ask yourself, if you call yourself as a leader.

Things to do for becoming a better leader

If you want to become a better people's person, here is what I would really recommend

1. Be able to uniquely and creatively introduce your people to people they don't know. The quality of how you introduce your people actually shows, how much respect and admiration you have for them. Practice, Practice and Practice

2. Be sure you stop and talk to your people regularly, more important stop and listen to them more. Talks which happens in corridors, near coffee machines are more important than what goes inside a meeting room.

3. Take very opportunity to appreciate, especially personal things. Some one is wearing a good shirt and really looks good in it, appreciate, you observe their attitude towards life, appreciate it. Its important to catch the smaller things than the larger ones. If you have difference of opinion or dislike a person, especially find things to appreciate.

4. Instant rewards, could be anything. Any Rewards and Acknowledging itself is one of the biggest motivator, even more than money. Treat your people, if needed spoil them. Remember everyone needs to feel special, cared for. Do that much and people will shower you with their trust, hardwork and love. I have seen it first hand, when this happens, being around such people itself is a big reward in life

5. Always remember conversations you had with people. Even if you can't do much about it. Just recalling them and stating you remember and have taken a small step towards itself helps. Nothing is more satisfying when I know my mentor remembers what matters to me.

6. Earn Respect by being good at what you do. If you are a leader who wants to gather people around and make them sit around in professional world, All the best. People in the professional world want a leader who can point to a place and say “That’s where we want to go”. That’s the nature of professional world. People in Spiritual world would say otherwise “Where are you going? sit here and be still” and yes that is right for them.

Well there are dozen more things I can write.

So where does Psychology come into picture here?

Understand Circles

Psychology wise the basic thing in all above is Circle of influence/ego. In Psychology Ego is used in the rawest form, so if you don't like it use a nicer word instead. We have layers of circles around us.

1. Thoughts

2. Body

3. Family

4. Friends

5. Works People

6. Religion/Cast/Region/Classes/Jobs

7. State

8. Country

9. Continent

etc

 

Human Nature

Human being would in general works towards

1. Attracting people within their circles by providing more

2. Making people jealous outside their circle

Take a moment and think about it, no matter how raw it may sound, recollect your past around the above statement

Entering People’s Circle

The key is you enter people's circles subconsciously not consciously. That is why most people do not get why someone else is being more popular or liked than themselves. More true when you want to be in the circle of your boss, or you are in a leadership position and you are clueless of why people still like their old mentors or other mentors than you.

The easiest and fastest way to become part of any one's circle is

1. Smile and Eye Contact

The moment you see someone, your instinct or subconscious mind makes a decision whether you like him/her. Then your conscious mind finds logical reasons to back that. We are not as logical as we appear

Hence consider a Smile and Eye Contact as cheat codes, use them all the times.

2. Body Contact - Shake hand, a pat on the back.

Again a Shake Hand or a Pat on back with colleagues go long way.

Let me give a non work example, especially for guys. If an average girl hits you in fun, when  you tease her, that relationship/friendship suddenly becomes very important.

But a Body contact has to be appropriate otherwise it would give you exact opposite results.

3. Appreciate, Appreciate and Appreciate

This is the third secret. Everyone has a circle of Ego/Self Esteem, they will open doors to people they agree with. Most people think very highly of themselves (no matter what), that is the human nature. Agreeing with specific traits of a person, results in them subconsciously opening the doors to their circles.

  Simple examples to help you out

  1. That Shirt looks good on you

  2. Someone’s all Happy today

  3. You two did a good job making that Good Looking Kid. (Always works for new parents, and believe me all babies are adorable)

  4. I really appreciate you being so upbeat despite all the trouble in your life.

  5. I dig the way you can be so consistent.

If you want to Guys, you will always find a way.

Many people who are angry about someone, will react to this advice saying I can not do “Kiss Ass”.

People who feel this has two issues

   - They have not clearly understood the advice. The advice is be true of what you appreciate. Find things that you could appreciate

   - They have people issues themselves. Their personal feeling are troubling them. They need to vent it out but not at anyone’s else expense.

Conclusion

Be Illogical with People, Be Logical with machines. Highly Logical People are

  1. The most boring

  2. The saddest

  3. and the most unhappiest

people in the world. People work at subconscious level. Logic does not work all that good at Subconscious level.

Be fun, open, transparent and more real. And knowing the above science you can be easily be part of anyone’s circles (if you wish so). For me this is very natural since I have practiced this for many years now.

All this becomes apparent to you if you study psychology and people around you. Easiest way is to be aware of how you feel and why you feel that, that itself is sufficient to learn psychology. Just be true to yourself when you do that, that is the trick.

Disclaimer

Having said that, being Human’s we are not meant to be perfect. Our Perfection is in our flaws. You will not want some people to be part of your circles at all. Its fine, but understand that their is a scientific reasons for this.