by Vijay Peduru on February 15, 2010
Many times in our life, we feel stuck or helpless when we encounter a situation. We would have encountered this same situation before but when we tried to control it, we couldn’t, so we accepted that it cannot be controlled. When the situation occurs again we think we are helpless and are resigned about it. This is called “Learned Helplessness” i.e we have learnt to be helpless and we get depressed. As grim this might sound, there is a silver lining to it – Since we have learnt to be helpless we can also unlearn it and come out of it.
Martin Seligson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several books including “Learned Optimism” did some interesting experiments on Learned Helplessness. They took a few dogs and divided them into two separate groups. The first group was given a electric shock and if they pressed a lever the shock stopped. The second group was wired parallel to the first group. i.e when the shock was given it goes to both the groups at the same time, but for the second group their lever didn’t stop the electric shock. It stopped when the first group pressed the lever. For the second group, the shocks appeared to start and end at random and they learnt that they cannot do anything to control the shocks and learnt to be helpless.
They took the same set of dogs and this time placed them in a different setting, This time, instead of a lever, they put a low partition in front of them, so they can jump out. When they gave the shocks the second group which learnt to be helpless simply lay down passively and whined even though their escape was just in front of them.
This is the same with humans. We can be trained to be in “Learned Helplessness” mode… How do we get out of this?
There are 2 ways.
1. Recognize this mindset: Whenever you are feeling helpless, remember that this may be “Learned Helplessness”. Many times we are not aware of this at all. It all happens unconsciously. Now you know what “Learned Helplessness” is , you can recognize this in yourself when you encounter it.
2. Be Optimistic : Once you notice “learned Helplessness” in yourself, the way to come out of this is learn to be optimistic. Martin Seligson in his experiments found that in the second set of dogs, Some dogs did not become helpless, but instead managed to find a way out of the unpleasant situation despite their past experience with it. This characteristic was found to correlate highly with the human character .. optimism.
Recheck your attitude and be optimistic..
—
Vijay Peduru is an entrepreneur in the bay area and is the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. His interests are bootstrapping, leadership and spirituality.
Tagged as: active garage,
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by Rajesh Setty on December 21, 2009
This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:
See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project
Previous article: Get (very) comfortable with the speed of change
BLOGTASTIC: Watch what you say outside the blog
Your blog is only a part of your life. You don’t want the blog to dictate what you do in the rest of your life. However, what you do offline has a direct bearing (almost all the time) on the way you are perceived via your blog. If you are a total jerk offline but appear to be sophisticated on the blog, then chances are that your true colors will come out at some point. Your offline words and actions will follow you onto the blog.
Since your blog increases the transparency of your life to the external world, the safest strategy is to keep your offline life in order. There are no other tricks that I can offer—except to live your life to the personal and ethical standards that you want others to perceive you.
The world is more connected than ever before. Let me offer a personal example. The conversations I have on the sidelines after a speaking engagement (public or private) have a tendency to travel on e-mail far and wide. People even post them in their own blogs. Sometimes I wonder whether these conversations were for public consumption. Maybe yes, maybe no. Whether I plan it or not, these private conversations sometimes become part of the online conversation.
This example is about an email sent by Angelo Mozilo, then CEO of Countrywide Financial. Angelo replied to a hardship letter from a customer (Dan Bailey) this way:
“This is unbelievable. Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the internet. Disgusting.”
Dan had sent the email using “text” from a help forum called “LoanSafe.Org” to about 20 email addresses in Countrywide Financial and Angelo was one of the recipients. Rather than hitting the “Forward” button, Angelo hit “Reply” and sent the above reply back to Dan.
Dan posted Angelo’s response back at LoanSafe.Org and then all hell broke loose.
Here’s my advice. You have to take care of all your conversations. There are so many contact points out there.
- E-mails you write;
- Newsgroups you participate in;
- Your speaking engagements;
- Your conversations on the sidelines;
- Networking organizations that you belong to;
- What you say in the social networks; and
- Your chat sessions (even if it is in the context of a game).
If that looks like a lot of work, you’re right. It’s hard to manage all of these conversations. However, there is a shortcut. Be a nice person, both on and off the blog.
Blogging Tip:
Being nice on and off the blog can help you big time.
Competent people who are nice have a much better chance of winning in life—when compared to people who are just competent.
Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called
Life Beyond Code and tweets as
@UpbeatNow Tagged as: attitude,
BLOGTASTIC!,
Communication
by Rajesh Setty on December 16, 2009
This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:
See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project
Previous article: Blogging is highly personal
BLOGTASTIC: Your attitude will show up on your blog
You’ve probably heard that “you only get one chance to create a good first impression.” It’s hard to dispute that fact in life. It is especially true on your blog.
With your blog, you are constantly on-stage before the world.
When you publish a blog, you are always creating first impressions. Your blog serves as your entry point into a worldwide networking event that runs 24-7-365. People will constantly have a chance to meet you and form impressions about you.
Your regular readers will know you, but new people may come to your blog at any time. So you need to be ready to make a great first impression with every single post. That’s a high standard to sustain.
Your readers will develop a picture of who you are—based on what you write. Your attitude, therefore, becomes critical. You can’t hide it. Your writings will in one way or the other reveal your real identity.
You want to show a positive, appealing attitude to your readers. What can you do?
Look carefully at your attitude within your writing. Do your words lift other people up and encourage them to think? Do your words show your frustration, anger, greed, or pretentiousness?
Blogging or not, you need to look at your attitude and reshape it for your own good. If you have the right attitude, it’ll show in your blog as well as every other part of your life. No mask will be necessary.
Blogging Tip:
Drop the mask
Pretending to be someone else does not work. It doesn’t work in real life, and it certainly won’t work for your blog. Wearing a mask all the time can be costly and risky.
You could pretend to be bigger than who you really are. You might gain some traffic and credibility that way. However, imagine the impact that will occur when people find out the truth.
Drop the mask. It’s really not worth it.
Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called
Life Beyond Code and tweets as
@UpbeatNow Tagged as: attitude,
blogging,
first impression
by Tanmay Vora on November 19, 2009
Welcome to the ninth post in this 12-part series on QUALITY, titled #QUALITYtweet – 12 Ideas to Build a Quality Culture.
Here are the first eight posts, in case you would like to go back and take a look:
- Quality #1: Quality is a long term differentiator
- Quality #2: Cure Precedes Prevention
- Quality #3: Great People + Good Processes = Great Quality
- Quality #4: Simplifying Processes
- Quality #5: Customers are your “Quality Partners”
- Quality #6: Knowing what needs improvement
- Quality #7: Productivity and Quality
- Quality #8: Best Practices are Contextual
#QUALITYtweet How NOT to deliver total quality:
Focus on quality of product without focusing on
quality of relationship and communication
In an increasingly service oriented business environment, what you sell is not just a product but an experience. People may forget explicit details like specifications or price, but never forget the experience they had when they bought the product.
Experience extended to end-customers largely depends on attitude, values and behaviors of each individual who interacts with a customer. One of the most important challenges is to keep this group of people aligned to organization’s quality system and values.
Communication is the backbone of organization’s success in marketplace. Effective internal and external communication within an organization ensures that:
- Your employees understand your value system
- They understand what is expected out of them
- They are motivated to walk an extra mile to deliver excellent service
- Your customers know your value system
- You build trust-based relationship with your people and customers with consistent communication
- Manage expectations with your people and customers.
How can you motivate your teams to deliver excellent customer experiences through simple communication processes? Here are a few ideas to consider:
Train:
Training your internal team can be your biggest tool for clearly explaining the process of communication and how important it is for the business. Consistently train your people on value systems, leadership, quality management, effective communication, what works in customer management, what not, expectations management and cultural aspects of client’s location. Clients also need training on how best they can use your products. Companies organize client workshops to educate them about different aspects of product/service. Train consistently to streamline communication.
Support:
Once your people are trained, you need to support them in doing right things. Supporting can be a simple act of being there with your people when they talk to customers. Help them improve and share feedback on how are they doing. Some companies may see this activity as an “overhead” but it is an “investment” in your people.
Monitor:
Once you have confidence that your people will be able to do the right communication, monitor them. Take periodic feedback from them. Communicate consistently to ensure that they are motivated enough to continue doing it.
Delivering consistently superior experience to your customers (via quality of products and communication) results in a long-term relationship based on trust. In business, as in life, relationships are crucial. Quality of your relationships is as important as quality of your products, or perhaps, even more.
—
Tanmay is a Software Quality Management professional based out of India. He hosts
QAspire Blog and tweets as
@tnvora. He is also an author of the book
#QUALITYtweet – 140 Bite-Sized Ideas to Deliver Quality in Every Project Tagged as: attitude,
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