360 Degree Feedback

You ought to have expected this subject crop up at this time of the year.

So what really is 360 degree feedback?

Its a form of multi layer feedback or round the circle feedback , where the feedback receiver is in the centre and all his peers, superiors , and subordinates provide feedback about the individual in question. This is being used in variety of organization to performance manage senior staff .

Is this a good thing? Yes, without doubt, this is a very good thing only if you understand how it works.

Lets take this example, if i were to provide feedback to six people although i would like to be unbiased and provide genuine feedback , it so happens that per human psychology the feedback is largely driven by what others say about the person for whom am about to provide the review i.e. what i have heard about him/her and also what were the latest actions by the individual concerned.

One of my colleague recently told me the untold truth of human mind. The human mind forgets and forgives things in the past , only recent actions are in the mind. This is called as recency effect in psychology, where recent actions/ phenomenon have greater impact on an output than events in the past.

This is true and is reflected in general across the 360 degree feedback that an individual receives.

Reading a 360 degree feedback can be nerve wracking. At least for me it has always been. There would be elements that would be surprises. Some of them positives, some negatives.

In general , when we read a report , it is clear that most of the strengths match to what others see , very rarely does the strength go unnoticed.

Having said that , the problem is when you compare the weakness , as an individual we could have rated our self as average in an area while others might rate as below par.

This is where the problem becomes acute in the report. As is often the case , the weakness gets magnified by the views and perception of various people.

We have to bear in mind that the feedback is an opinion and strictly not the truth. However it does give an element of direction on where things are going wrong , at a much magnified scale due to thoughts and perceptions of all individuals who have provided feedback

Some times reading the report can make one sweat, as it could be a nasty reading and vilification of the individual.

Couple of my mentors have always educated me to treat the 360 degree feedback report objectively and treat it as a tool to better oneself rather than to consider it as a finger pointing exercise .

Its a tool which can provide orientation to what actions that an individual need to carry out in order to perform better.

To be honest i have had extremely successful reviews and not so great reviews, how we turn this around is a matter of how we treat the report.

Should this report be exclusive in treating an individuals performance, its any body's guess . Am not a big fan of using it solely for performance management.

If we treat it as a report which is critical in nature and allow the confidence to be dented, things go from bad to worse, on the other hand if we treat it as a tool to provide direction to our efforts, results are always going to be better.

One of my strongest supporter ,mentor and probably can call coach because he identified me early on in my carrier, recently said - As one grows in the organization, he/she needs to become an enabler rather than the doer.

How true. So use the 360 degree feedback as an enabler/catalyst for you to perform better in future and don't take it to heart. After all you are what you are, no one is a perfect individual and people always have an opinion about you, whether good or bad. Take the good things, work on the not so good things. Items which you think are actually irrelevant and said on a personal bias , you aren't too bothered about anyway.

Good Luck.

I didn't know buying an Iphone and a bottle of Wine were this difficult!

Yes, its been a good week overall.

The highlight of the week was the weekend , where i had to buy an iphone and a bottle of Wine for two different people.

The iphone request came in earlier in the week from one of my friend , he wanted a 16 GB black Iphone 4 , i promised i'll buy him little did i realize that i would run pillar to post to get it.

On a gloomy saturday morning , i went to the Apple showroom to buy one, only to be said that i had to reserve a phone before i can buy it. The reservation can only be done on a daily basis , so we cannot reserve in advance , hang on doesn't reserve mean booking in advance ? Yes, that's correct , however Apple being Apple , have their own way . You can only reserve a product for purchase later in the same day but not advance book it for subsequent days.

Such a misery. So i checked if i can reserve one for later in the day , alas i couldn't there were no stock left. tried reserving it in other Apple stores but in vain.

I went shop after shop, went into all retail mobile phone shops, searched each and every mobile carrier and all i got was , either it was sold only in contract i.e. you could buy the phone only if you also take a connection for a minimum of twelve months or there was no stock left.

I walked the length and breadth of a major street , after two hours , i just ran out of gas and my mind wasn't thinking.

I went to the ISCKON temple , not to pray but to have a sumptuous vegetarian meal. After the meal , my instincts kicked in and i thought there must be one shop that should sell this product.

My friend was in another country and i was buying for him , so i had to update him as well, in comes Twitter as i posted real time updates . He was aghast that i couldn't buy one for him.

As luck would have it , there was one small shop (of course a store of a major carrier) which had stock of the phone. The lady in the counter said , sir you can only buy he phone with a pre-paid top up , i didn't mind it so long as i was able to buy it.

Hurray , finally i bought the Iphone and was so elated as if i was buying it for me. This was Saturday.

Come Sunday , i had been invited to my colleagues house for Lunch , i had no idea what to buy.

I had seen in lot of TV programmes that giving liquor as a gift is quite common and was thought to be appropriate, i thought to myself buying a liquor should be easy and let me follow that route.

Little did i realize that if i had to buy some thing , i had to know about what am buying. Me being tee-toddler had no idea about wine or champagne.

All i knew was Bordeaux wine , however i stood in dismay looking at shelves of Wine bottles without knowing what meant what. There was Chabalis, Sparkling wines, red wines , the list was endless. Enter the all important skill that defines us Humans , not intelligence but speeech. I asked around on how to select a good wine for the occasion and in came help via a lady who came to my rescue in the shop, she explained the culture and adviced that i buy red wine, also explaining why it was the most appropriate.

She helped me pick up a bottle of wine from the scores that were available , finally i had managed to buy it , i bought a shiraz wine, was a south australian 2009 wine.

The above is what i ended up buying.

What a week!

Take Care.

Everything Can Be Solved If Only We Talk - A Hard Lesson Learnt

Such a big title , yes it was such a big lesson for me and hence such a big title.

Its quite explicit from the title on what i want to write.

How easy can issues be solved if only we speak out. It could be issues between countries , between two sect , between two communities, between two families and of course between two individuals.

We have seen lots of success stories around the world where much pain had been averted when two leaders put aside their differences and were ready to speak. Its the only way out to solve issues, keeping quite is not an option.

However my blog is about two individuals ,one a male (myself) and a female who also closest pals, its beyond doubt that spelling out the issues and speaking to each other is the way out to solve problems.

I learnt this lesson from my closest friend, who incidentally is much younger to me.

Who said only elders ought to teach young people? I think we can learn things even from Kids.

My relationship with my friend was absolutely at breaking point last week , we had a tiff off on probably the most simple yet the most complicated thing and in friendship , this issue is the pillar. The element on what they call Trust.

I was relentlessly putting pressure on her without understanding her situation and why things were done the way they were. In hindsight , i had made far too many mistakes for my liking.

Things started off badly last weekend and as the week progressed it went from being bad to worse , i had no idea where this was all heading to. It was middle of the week it struck me as a thunderbolt that my relationship was at a breaking point and i was feeling sick.

I was at loss as to what has gone wrong and feeling bitter to even imagine that such a cherished and the most important relationship that i had cared for in the recent years was in the brink of disaster.

Things just didn't look brighter at the start of Thursday , it was all doom and gloom, much to my misery . I did not give up hope , all i hoped was that i get a chance to sort out the issue.

Work pressure didn't help either , as everything piled on me and i had no answer to what fate had to offer and thought life sucks and i thought i was sitting inside a pressure cooker.

I didn't know whom to turn to , i just turned to the obvious messiah of all troubles ' The Almighty'.

I prayed to him and said , save my friendship . I didn't have to wait for long , i did get an answer the same evening in the form of a lesson and the lesson was an email stating the following.

' Hi,

I need to speak to you regarding whatever is going wrong. Lets speak and sort it out.

Can you call me tonight.

Regards

Ur Best friend'

What a relief i had seeing that email as tears rolled in my eyes , i thanked the almighty and also thought , i could have done that but i guess male ego just blurred my thoughts.

I did speak to her the same evening , we spoke at length and spelled out all issues , if there was one. I had been slightly farsighted and anger was a killer as it almost drowned whatever i had earned in this friendship.

I had learnt an important lesson in life , if only i had spoken out and sorted out the issue early on , lots of pain would have been averted nevertheless it was one heck of a ride and i have learnt an important lesson.

This week has been worth living , this lesson will stay with me for a long time.

Now things look brighter , hope i don't make this mistake again.

Take this as an example to all people who follow my blog. Please do speak out and sort out the issues, always understand issues from each others perspective and not only your own.

Have a bright start to the week ahead.

Why Do People Run Away From Reality?

Ask yourself that question. Its very hard to understand why humans behave the way they do when it comes to understanding certain realities of the day to day life.

This spans family circumstances , individual relationships, work place performance or for that matter sports.

As i realized quite painfully this week , evading away from reality is only going to aggravate the existing situation.

One of the key issues in understanding the reality of the situation is the acceptance that something isn't working the way it has to work. Humans dislike negativity, its one of those little things that human species dislike.

The moment someone says to us that something is wrong and a job, relationship or family ties aren't working it supposed to work, we either go on the offensive or in denial in the form of subdued rejection of the claim in question. Does this help? probably not and it never will work nor help in solving the issue at hand.

Rather than doing this, if only we could asses the issue more objectively , life would be be far better in all walks of life.

The first learning of 2011 for me has been this, in any situation objective assessment is required rather than a subjective one and there is no running away from the problem at hand.

If there is a problem , there ought to be a solution if not we wouldn't have had electricity, electric bulbs, laptops,palmtops, tablet pc, jumbo jets, high speed trains, the list is endless.

An objective assessment puts the mind on the right frame of thought process , which enables clear decision making , which in all probability leads to successful outcome. There are very few people who are born with this skill, majority of the ordinary mortals do not have this skill.

As i stated, this is a skill which can always be developed. Hopefully, this learning would help me be better in 2011.

To all who read this blog , do bear in mind that i have written this from what i have seen. You are more than welcome to contradict my arguments

Bye Bye 2010 and Welcome 2011

Its another 365 days gone by , as we put full stop to 2010 and welcome another 365 days.

Has the 365 days that has gone by been any different from the previous? Yes, am sure it was.

2010 has been a very mixed year for me . A year which has had its own share of success and failures. The below is probably a good summary.

To start with i think i became more disciplined , for the first time ever i tracked my personal goals. I had become more tech savvy in the whole process not by leaps and bounds but by a reasonable margin.

There were lot of lessons learnt on the way and also found out the real people who actually shape my life. Love has still eluded me this year , so its still the same with me as am yet to find my better half.

The realization of life moving ahead of me hit my mind hard , so i slowed down to enjoy the beauty of life , realizing that just working and earning money isn't important, there are other things in life that need to be given time for.

During the previous years, Whenever hard times came by , i asked the almighty why me? For a change i learnt that when i succeed i should also ask him ' why me' as i found out that how fortunate i am as compared to the millions of people who suffer every day.

This year has also been exemplified by the art of giving , the understanding of the fact that the more you give , the more happy you are , is this pursuit of happiness?may be you could call it that way.

The excitement of the sporting season cannot be undermined, as it showed sports can bring nations and culture closer than one can ever imagine and i watched a F1 grand prix live at the Circuit , which still makes me smile. That has been a dream come true.

Had a reasonable travelful year as there were places on this earth which i had visited for the first ever time. Had unique opportunity to try out various cuisine's .

The first half of the year and the second half of the year had been diametrically opposite to me, i enjoyed and succeeded in the first half of the year and i struggled and almost failed in the second half, however the second half thought me very valuable lessons in life.

As the world diversifies itself and new technologies are found , its increasingly hard to slow down and the pace of life is only going to get ever faster , am afraid that in this pace we might loose the underlying values of human life.

In the world of movies which are so surreal and fictitious , sometimes there are those rare gems which waves magic and gets the human emotions to its edge , i did enjoy those rare movies this year.

There is a saying ' Katrathu Kai Allavu , Kallathathu Ulag Allavu' , this translates to ' What you have learnt is just a handful and what you need to learn is a world out there' , i understood its importance this year as i learnt to iron my clothes, learn to fit an electric bulb or for that matter learnt to make the batter for pancakes, this year has been all about learning.

In one of the major south Indian movie, a statement is made to this hero ' Sir, you are Great' . The Hero laughs and retaliates back to the common man ' You fool, the man who bought me to his world ' the almighty' is great'. This statement is funny and the meaning is so obvious but to understand the meaning a quick walk across a crowded city would be more than enough to affirm the statement, as i walk past so many people, places each and everyday i enjoy the charisma of the world and the genius behind the man who created it.

As i conclude 2010 and welcome 2011 , am sure its going to be another 365 different days. I step forward with confidence because i have had a great journey in 2010 in which i have learnt invaluable lessons which are going to shape the next 365 days.

As you read this , you are going to think , hey that's similar to my experience , well after all am one among you, the common man.

I wish all of you a very happy new year. See you 2010, welcome 2011.

Everything Comes to a Standstill

You don't need to be too proud if you have found out what am intending to write.

Yes , its Christmas and leading up to end of year, everything has slowed down. I am in Poole (UK) over Christmas period and life has ground to a halt.

Temperature has plummeted to -7 degrees which doesn't help either. I literally mean life has become a standstill. All shops are closed and if you need essential food items either you should have stocked it or wait until shops open on 27th .

To my surprise people here take Christmas day very seriously , its all about family , many people travel to their mothers and dads place or get -together in their friends place. Everything slowed down from last week.

Work in office was just crawling , there was no hustle and bustle . There was no sense of any urgency, i think its the only time of the year procrastination isn't a sin and many of the office disciplines probably doesn't apply.

I am pleasantly surprised with this break and enjoying the four long days of holiday after what has been a grueling year.

Life will come back to normal from Wednesday next week until then , to all you folks enjoy the Christmas break.

Very Nice and a Mice weekend

Didn't have any reasonable topic to blog on so i thought i would blog about the weekend.

It was a very nice and a mice weekend , let me first say the nice part and then the mice part.

This weekend i had a rendezvous between me and one of my very good friend Rama. He works for a company here and agreed to come over for this weekend.

As always when two old time friends meet, there is an element of excitement in the air. Ours was no different and the laughs started right from the start. Rama was due to come on Friday night , he had messaged me stating that he would leave his place at 7:40 and would reach my place by 10:00, i mis-read the 7:40 as 17:40. Due to this misunderstanding; i reached home early from office to prepare dinner , only to find out that Rama was due to start at 7:40 and not 17:40 .

Anyway , no harm done. He reached a junction and called me. I picked the call and said to him that he give me a call when he reaches a place known to both of us.

Rama misunderstood this and got down at the place where i asked him to call me , hence i had to wait in the freezing cold near my train station. Eventually he made it and we had a great laugh about the mis-understading in communication.

The night went by with usual banter between two friends and catching up with things in our lives.

On Saturday , Rama, another neighbour of mine who was mutual friend of us and myself went shopping .Before that we payed our respects to Lord Krishna at an ISKCON temple, once we made our offerings we came down for a solid lunch, although it was touch expensive but was worth it and we didn't mind it.

We just walked throughout the day shopping and by five in the evening we were exhausted . We decided to head back home. Back home , we relaxed and had good dinner watching a hillarious movie. It made for a great Saturday. Sunday was just relaxing .

As the day came to a close , myself and Rama had a good dinner at Pizza hut . As i bid adieu for him at the bus station , reality hit me that next week was round the corner and its back to work from tomorrow.

It was a great weekend.

Coming to the mice story , somehow in this cold , mice has got into my apartment. Neither do they know how to get out of my apartment , nor do i know how to get rid of them. Iam keeping my fingers crossed that they don't do damage any cable lines in the apartment. Hoping to get someone from the concierge or the estate agents to fix this issue tomorrow.

All in all , has been a nice and a mice weekend for me.