How To Handle An Insecured Boss

Having spent 15 years in job with Corporate India, before becoming an entrepreneur, and few years with an extremely insecure and difficult boss to deal with, let me tell you that it demands a lot of courage and maturity to tolerate a continuous bombardment of both decent and indecent abuses and subtle insults directed from the opposite side.

This article is based on my own experiences, while working with one of the largest Indian corporations during early nineties. My boss was a science graduate and was insecured about a qualified engineer directly reporting to him. And also that of many others, who have been sharing with me their own sufferings.

Dealing with an insecured and difficult boss can be a challenging and draining experience. I know it, because I had lived that experience and frankly speaking when I remember those years now, I just tell myself: What the f**k was that?

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Desire, Strategy And Smart Work: Success

Nothing works, nothing really works in your favor, unless you have an intense Desire to make it happen in life in a big way.

Even a sky rocketing desire would lead you nowhere, unless you have a solid Strategy in place to turn your dream into reality.

And finally, neither an intense desire nor a solid strategy would make you the member of an elite club of billionaires, if you fail to identify and act upon right opportunities: Smart-work!

Life, on different platforms, is always fair to all, in terms of offering game-changing opportunities for making it big in life.

However, most of us don't recognize those opportunities. Some of us, despite recognizing, fail to turn them into stupendous success. But a few never commit such mistakes and make it huge in life through a combination of DESIRE, STRATEGY and SMART-WORK.

Remember, you're a born warrior. It's only the worst circumstances that makes you look inferior in a given time. Since you can't change an unfavorable situation, why not transform yourself to a fighter who never believes in giving up until making it happen.

Accept, and live with no pains and complaints, every wound that life has inflicted upon you; look at every misery as a trophy that destiny has offered you; and remember that you have a point to prove to yourself.

All these words and sentences that I have written so far in this blog are not my assumptions, but truly reflect what I had experienced -- while making a successful turn around from deep within a financial grave not so long ago.

You must remember that 'something never comes from nothing.' So, if you're targeting extra-ordinary success, you must invest extra-ordinary efforts in for achieving the same. Are you ready to do it?

Image Credit: Joshua Miranda

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Do Not Misunderstand Lord Krishna

Karma kadro, phal na moth sacho, ka Matlab hota hein 500% Karma karo. Itna Karma karo, ke phal tumhari jholi mein aa gire. 

Gita has been misinterpreted by so many, bit by bit, gradually, over several thousand years. Did Arjuna fight the battle of Kuruskhetra without expecting to win it. Did Lord Krishna say that?

Many of us think that we have done our Karma. Phal nehi Mila to they misquote Lord Krishna by saying - we have done our Karma, but result nehi Aya to kya hua. Krishna ne hi to Bola hein, result ka moth socho.

If you have writen a book and expect that none will read it, is that true Karma? Phir likha hi kyon? The fact is: Put so much of effort in writing that book that it captures the imagination of others and compels them to read it.

And that happens when we leave no stone unturned with relentless actions and investing 500 percent of our efforts to make that book so interesting that people have no option but to read it.

That is what Lord Krishna told Arjuna without excessive elaboration and we common people become happy with ignoring the same while not reading between the lines.

Writing book, is an example. What I am trying to highlight: It applies to each and every domain of life with regard to whatever we are doing to climb to the summit of recognition.

Put in your best efforts. Not 100 percent, but more than 500 percent. Then notice, what Krishna had said truly makes sense.

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A Man of Action!

Few years ago, after getting down from Metro Rail at Chattarpur Station, New Delhi, I was looking for an auto-ricksaw.

I was standing on the pavement across the main road. With people moving like ants, there was no sign of an auto.

Suddenly, just a meter away from me, an auto-ricksaw came to a screeching halt and the driver waved at me.

I ran toward him, and as soon as I reached him he said in English, "Sir, get inside, else this policeman would challan me."

Perplexed, how an auto-driver was speaking fluent English, I first got inside and then asked him about his background.

To cut the story short - He, a Master in Political Science, retired from a Govt. Job, is now an auto-driver not out of compulsion.

Further discussion with him revealed, when, after retirement, he was unable to find out a job that would keep him busy for at least 8 hrs a day, he decided to buy an auto and drive it.

He was talking to me in chaste English. 

"Sir, I receive a good pension and both my sons are well settled. However, I can't sit idle through-out the day. Hence, I decided to take up this profession," he concluded. 

With my destination fast approaching, I decided to end the conversation.

However, even after 2 years of our chance encounter, I still remember him for his dedication to action.

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Are You A Leader?

Having interacted with and interviewed more than 10,000 plus senior and mid level professionals in last 25 years of career in Executive Search, dissecting their profiles from various angles, my definition of Leadership is as follows:

A person who can make the other person sitting across the table or on the other side of the communication network comfortable, inspire her or him to open up during conversation from the bottom of heart - is a Leader.

Watch out your own performance, evaluate and get the answer to this trillion dollar question - "Am I A Leader?"

Image Credit: Madhurima Kar

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You Are The God Yourself!

None boards a sinking ship in the journey of life, everyone bows down to the power of drive.

All Happiness lessons are fine in black and white print, but a warrior decides his destiny during a battle stint.

Walking the path of fire if you taste the blood of victory, you would always be remembered imortally through the history.

Decide to choose or choose to decide, where do you wish to reside?

Fading into the obscurity of nothingness after death, or being remembered as a winner before taking the final breath!

Put your best efforts into running the race of life again and again, never get tired or rest even if you kiss the limits of your pain.

Look into the mirror and tell yourself, come what may I would prove myself.

Most of us get motivated for a while only and remain ordinary in life, only a few cut through the challenges with the sharpness of a knife.

Look within and wake up the sleeping giant of action, to celebrate stupendous success in the limitless horizon.

You are the creator of your existence, purpose and its justification, you are the child of nothing but your imagination.

You are the God of your Destiny, you are the God of your life and you are the God himself or herself in yourself!

Image Credit: Madhurima Kar

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Would You Visit My Blog To Motivate Me?

I am a Recruiter and an Entrepreneur, running my own organisation "Lis & Rim Consulting." 

Apart from identifying the best available candidates for my clients, I spend more than 4 hour everyday reading books on Life Management, Career Management, Relationship Management and Human Psychology.

Clubbing the learning from those books with my own life experience, I write articles on various subjects to help people navigate through rough and tough times in their own lives and win against all odds.

To go through those articles, you may visit my blog "Rainstorm' at www.abhijitkar.net and share your thoughts and ideas by commenting against specific posts. 

Your suggestions are extremely valuable and important for (1) helping me improve upon the contents and (2) inspiring me to write many more motivational and meaningful articles in future.

Would you like to visit my blog and subscribe to the same for getting automatic new article updates?

Image Credit: Madhurima Kar

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Do You Know All 21st Century Humans Are Salesperson?

Adam Grant, the author of best-selling book "Give And Take," interviewing Daniel Pink.

Now you may go through how Daniel Pink summarizes his best selling book "To Sell Is Human" in a story telling format.

"Once upon a time, only some people were in sales.

Every day, they sold stuff, we did stuff, and everyone was happy.

One day, everything changed: All of us ended up in sales—and sales changed from a world of caveat emptor to caveat venditor.

Because of that, we had to learn the new ABCs—attunement, buoyancy, and clarity.

Because of that, we had to learn some new skills—to pitch, to improvise, and to serve.

Until finally, we realized that selling isn’t some grim accommodation to a brutal marketplace culture. It’s part of who we are—and therefore something we can do better by being more human."

The book, as analyzed by Niklas Goeke, is as follows:

"Selling is part of your life, no matter what you do, and what a successful salesperson looks like in the 21st century, with practical ideas to help you convince others in a more honest, natural and sustainable way.

Here are 3 lessons from the book:

1. Almost half of your time at work is spent in non-sales selling, which is really just trying to move others.

2. Honesty and service are taking over sales, because the internet has closed the information gap.

3. Use 'Yes, and…' when talking to customers to make sure they stay positive and engaged."

So all of us in 21st Century are more or less Salesperson, irrespective of the nature of career we are pursuing.

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Can You Accept Criticism With Positive Mindset?

Normally we feel uncomfortable, while being criticized. In fact, we are unable to tolerate anyone criticizing us.

We never try to find out, whether there were genuine reasons for someone finding faults in our act and behavior.

Sometime they might be right and sometime wrong. However, we always consider criticism as an instrument to threaten our existence.

Surprisingly, there was a person who used to ask for criticism from others in order to find out his faults, take corrective action on them and improve the same.

His name is E.H. Little and he was working as Salesman for Soap Bars manufactured by Colgate.

When he had been consistently failing in his job, what he did is a lesson for most of us.

He went back to those people who had refused to buy soaps from him and asked them point blank - what was wrong in his approach, when he was trying to convince them.

He continued doing so, taking feedback and improving on his techniques and eventually became the president of the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Soap Company—one of the world’s largest makers of soap.

In life, people will appreciate us and criticize as well. We must enjoy appreciation, but accept criticism as an opportunity to improve upon our weaknesses.

Let's develop a Positive Mindset and ask for unbiased, helpful and constructive criticism.

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Be The Knowledge Leader!

While surfing through photos posted on social media, you will notice that the image of an individual is integrated with the back ground of expensive Cars, Golf Course, 7 Star Hotel Restaurant etc - an inherent desire in every human to show off that s/he is better placed than many.

This is called Brand Dependence. More expensive and royal the brands are in the perception of our society, more valuable we think ourselves are.

Our own identity is identified with and defined by the brands we are using and attached with.

Our own values and ethics are determined by the reputation of the brands we are in possession of or integrated with.

I wouldn't denounce this established norms and practice prevalent in modern human society.

In fact I would appreciate it, only if, while being associated with those great brands - we gather knowledge and work smart to establish ourselves as valuable brands in terms of learning and sharing knowledge with others.

I am not talking about typical Film Stars and conventional Political Leaders; I am talking about who contribute great creativity to the humanity in every domain of life: Knowledge Leaders.

Let us develop our knowledge and skills to such an extent that we don't require the assistance of any brand to enhance our own branding.

Be the knowledge leader!

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Why You Must Question Your Belief System!

A group of Scientists did an experiment once: They kept a few bananas hanging from the top of a cage and put a ladder leading to the same. On the roof, they installed a water sprayer.

Then they put 5 monkeys inside. Watching the bananas, monkeys started climbing the ladder. However, Scientists immediately released water from the spray on them. Getting wet, all the monkeys retreated.

Whenever monkeys tried going up, water was sprayed on them. After sometime, they stopped trying.

Scientists then replaced one of the monkeys with a new one. Looking at the banana, new monkey started climbing the ladder. 

No water was sprayed this time. But remaining 4 monkeys started bringing that monkey down and beat him up.

One by one, Scientists went on relacing all monkeys, and finally they had 5 new monkeys inside the cage who had no experience of water spraying from the top while attempting to climb up.

Strangely, none of these 5 monkeys made any attempt at going up the ladder, afraid of being beaten up by others. 

They only knew going up the ladder means torture by others, even though none of them had any idea why it was so.

In life, this is what happens when we blindly follow our belief system about many practices initiated long ago, never questioning the current relevance of the same.

PS: This is a story. May not be true. However, it makes a point.

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Build Your Personal Brand For Getting Success!

Your phone is ringing. You look at the screen and notice who is calling you.

His no is saved. So you know, who is that.

How do you decide, whether to pick it up or not?

Let's consider, for example, two different calls from two different persons, whose names are saved in your address book.

One is Abhijit Kar, and the other is Abhijit Bhaduri.

You are in an important meeting, when the calls came in.

Who would you respond to?

Well, it depends on your perception of the importance of who is calling you.

In simple words, it depends on the value addition of that person to your life calling you.

In more simple words, it depends on the decision of your subconscious mind, evaluating the social ranking of the individual calling you.

In short, it depends on the Personal Brand value of the person calling you.

You would respond to Abhijit Bhaduri, obviously; you would disconnect Abhijit Kar, undoubtedly.

Isn't it?

So, the truth is very simple. The reality is imaginable!

Your success depends entirely on your Personal Brand value.

Your are nothing, as an individual, unless you're a hot brand.

That's how the society works.

Work hard, think smart and be the Brand people like to like interacting and be associated with.

That is success!

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Success Is All About Action!

"No matter what you do; go all the way in or don't go at all." ~ Robin Sharma

When you put maximum efforts into doing something and start getting incremental rewards, you'll begin to love doing it.

Once you love what you you do - you're on the right track of achieving stupendous success in life.

You don't need any dose of motivation! That's a business idea minting billions of dollars in revenue from books and seminars.

What you need is called Activation Energy to push you penetratre through the wall of mental retardation.

You don't have to read any self-help book for achieving success. All you need to do is to unleash small actions on daily basis.

Succeess not a 5/7/9 steps formula we read in inspirational books. Success is only about positive actions, while doing what you need to do.

Predetermined Passion is a myth, in my opinion. How many of you have any idea about your Passion? Passion is discovered while doing things, not before.

Just do it, even if you don't feel like. Over a period of time, you will start loving it. Once you start loving it, you will get passionate about it.

That will bring success in life!

"Action is the foundational key to all success." ~ Pablo Picasso

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Give Your Employees The Power Of Control!

Scanning through my career, spanning over a few decades, the most effective performance enhancing factor I could remember was nothing but having a sense of control over whatever I had been doing. 

Scientific research into the DNA structure of Management Science has already confirmed that giving employees control over what they do and how they do, leads to a sense of fulfillment and multiply the degree of engagement.

My best career performance was in the organization where my bosses  delegated the act of problem solving and decision making to me, allowing me full freedom and control over all the activities in my area of operation.

The opposite happened in another organization I had worked for several years, without having any control over anything within my sphere of responsibility.

Leadership may look into this aspect of human psychology with a better sense of understanding and ensure appropriate mechanism for implementation of the same to create a self-controlled culture of working in the organization. 

Give them the Power of Control and watch the wonders unfolding. Based on my personal experience, I can bet on witnessing a dramatic shift in employee engagement.

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Two Stories: Think, Before You Judge!

We are constantly judging people and situations based on whatever information we have gathered, thinking that we have sufficient knowledge about the same to come to a definite conclusion.

While doing so, often we ignore the fact that there could be a bigger picture in that regard which is still not known to us. And there we go wrong and, sometime, in a big way.

The consequence of false judgement, leading to wrong thoughts, feelings and actions could sometime be quite devastating. 

I think, we should never judge someone unless we know the wider perspective and look for information that we are not yet aware of.

That's is the only way to understand why someone is behaving the way they are doing and some situations are the way they are.

You may go through the following videos, highlighting two stories, to understand why you should take a pause and think twice before judging anyone or any situation on the face value.

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It Is All About Your Position, Not You!

Holding prestigious and responsible positions, both in government and private organizations, with great authority and power, we forget that the attention and respect we receive are not meant for us as individual but the positions we represent.

There is nothing personal, everything is official, unless we have a powerful personal brand equity for commanding recognition and appreciation on our own as individual.

This is very important for us to understand it and accept the same to ensure a smooth transition from the world of dream to the realm of reality, when we relinquish our positions.

It is difficult to accept such stripping down of years of being the center of attention and the pleasure of domination, but it is inevitable and obvious. Let us accept the truth gracefully.

Simon Sinek, a best selling author and management guru, explains the same with two real life examples and I thought it is worth sharing with my readers.

Here it is. Watch with full attention. You need to click on the video couple of times to activate it.

Image Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko

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