Archives for April 2020

People tend to pay more attention to others’ signs of approvals more often than they realize.

These are more pronounced in social media and other online social circles, in the forms of social approval indicators such as likes, followers, subscribers, comments, and mostly anything that can be quantified. In workplace, this comes in the form of any intranet blogs and SFW (Safe For Work) Social Media websites.

Ratings and reviews on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms can be cited as one of the best examples where, in one way it helps to read them before making purchasing judgments and doubly acts as a barometer for a product’s quality from the people who use them directly. However, on the other hand, they are not quite effective and come with loopholes and back doors. The main loophole being the fact that such quantifying metrics could be manipulated in many ways – skewing the numbers, portraying percentages instead of real numbers, depicting values under extreme conditions instead of a real random sampling, to name a few.

When people blindly rely on such measures to make decisions, it marks the beginning of complexity and jeopardizes the act of real value creation.

What’s the solution, then?

Well, knowing how to read and translate such approval indicators, leaving some room for benefit of doubt with a 20% here and there trying as best as one could, and to be as close to the person or product in question as possible, helps to a greater extent.

To conclude, please don’t fall for such indicators and factors alone and try to make educated decisions wherever such social approvals matter – this matters more in professional situations such as recruiting.

Recommended Reading: The Art of Social Media – Power Tips for Power Users, by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick

Cheers, and take care!

If you want to know if someone is good at their job, watch them do it for 30-60 seconds, a research says. But take that with a pinch of salt because not everyone is cut out for excellence all the time.

Circumstances, situations, environments, people present, everything plays a role and must be considered before judging someone at something. That’s why face to face interviews often prove the contrary and only working with them over time shows what they are really capable of. Hence, the reason why most companies follow the concept of probationary periods of 3 to 6 months or sometimes even up to 1 year before confirming the employment.

We need to give them time to help them prove that they are capable of greater things than the ones that are possible to squeeze in just few seconds.

We all pay more attention to people who are comparatively charming, pretty, confident, and talkative. The first moments or days with them fall into mental inertia and a kind of distorted reality sets in. And so we tend to take the time to evaluate them.

Studies show that if someone seems extroverted, confident, religious, or conscientious, they probably are. Similarly, funny people are smart – effective humour production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans. Having a knack to read and understand people and give them time under any circumstances is important than always taking first impressions into consideration.

Recommended Reading: What EveryBODY is Saying – An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People and, The Dictionary of Body Language.

 

Cheers, and good luck!

– Arun

With the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, more and more companies have opted to Work From Home. With this, face-to-face conversations happen lesser and lesser and chat conversations, especially in group settings, will happen more. Not all might be formal discussions, and for few introverts who say something but don’t attract any reaction could end up being a big blow to their ego(?) that nobody is paying heed to their expressions.

It’s important to understand and visualize that there are no room full of people (chat room) sitting and watching your text (the messages you type) and choosing to ignore you. Instead, everyone is working on something, or might not even be at desk (even if their status shows as Online). Just know that the scene here is totally different, especially if you start feeling that people are ignoring you. That’s the last thing. They are just busy, it’s important to assume positive intentions, not because we must assume they’re good, but because our moods should not be spoiled because of others’ reactions to what you have to say – that’s the bane of Social Approval Indicators such as the ‘like’, ’emoticon’, buttons. Forget textual responses – you must be lucky (or a manager) if you want them consistently for all your messages.

To conclude, the next time you share something that you think is funny, but find no response at all, just move on! Nobody will remember that a week from now, may be it’s just you. On the contrary, you are the courageous one for contributing to team conversations when the others haven’t done it.

Recommended Reading: The Art of Mingling, Fun and Proven Techniques for Mastering Any Room

 

Cheers, and good luck!