Exercising Authority

It is not easy to maintain authority on a group of people without using the power that your position provides. But, the best way to lead people is by not using those powers but using your managerial abilities, skills, knowledge with the harmony of the right communication techniques. When I take a look at the people around me that I respect the most, (job, friends, family) I realize that what they do most of the time is to understand and guide me to the right direction. It is hard to truly understand someone, as discussed at the earlier posts, but it it possible with emphatic thinking. What I observe is that me respecting those people, makes it possible for me to accept what they say easier than anyone else's claims. Thus I understand that respect is one of the most important element when considering leadership. A true leader should be the mirror of the group, reflect its skills, show them how beautiful they are. He should let the others shine and let them be autonomous. An understanding leader doesn't necessarily means that he shouldn't give up his authority, on contrary, he should always be present and influential.

Respect and Authority

Personally I value respect a lot. If I sense any lack of respect towards me from anyone, I disconnect with him. I find it very irritating to communicate with someone who is not willing to hear my opinions and not respecting my presence. Respect in work environment depends on personal skills, trust and achievements. We need to respect and be respected while experiencing and expressing authority. When mentioning authority we should also talk about how to maintain our power while leading someone. Many different kinds of leadership is present but the best way is an emphatic and trustful way. We did some communication examples in class when in a presence of authority, shaping our sentences trough subjective and requesting to say no. In order to be respected, we should have an energy which affects positively to whom we interact and we should let everyone be autonomous. We should remember that us having the power doesn't mean that we should use the power and  we shouldn't act predicting that someone would use the power he or she has.

Trust

As I missed the last weeks class, I thought It would be nice to share this video about trust which was the topic covered. I think trust resembles to a ramp, it is very easy to loose someones trust and really hard to earn it back.

Empathy

-How did make such a mistake, I am so stupid!
-Everyone does mistakes don't worry just pay more attention next time.

THIS IS NOT EMPATHY!

Hard to accept right? But that's true, this is not empathy, this is consolidation.
Empathy is to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Being able to really understand without trying to judge, help, advise, consolidate or change the subject. People often try to take responsibility about other's problems. They try to take action on other's behalf. The sentence that I have written on top is a perfect example of that. That person knows that he is not stupid or he needs to be careful next time. Emphatic response should have included the feeling and the needs that he observes, meaning that he understands and connects with the other without taking any action. Such answer could be a question such as "You feel disappointed with yourself because you wanted that job to be perfect?" Empathy is instinctive for us, people are born with empathy and understanding others, reading intentions and minds. It is crucial to know that someone can feel what I feel when I express the situation I am in, because I need to be understood. Feeling and needs are same for every human being so we are perfectly capable of empathizing with others and it is a perfect way to fulfill other's needs.

Listening Attentively

To be honest, I used to think that active listening is being concentrated on who is talking and trying to understand what he or she is trying to say until I attended the course about listening. As we are contaminated with scenes of people not even letting the others end their sentences, in most of the conversations we witness, I find it normal that I felt like an active listener when I let people complete their process of explaining their thoughts. What I learned is that listening is more complicated that it seems and there are various techniques to be able to truly connect with someone. As most of the things we learned in this class, active listening has the purpose of fulfilling the needs of being understood. We try to let people share what is alive for them at that moment with us by guiding them with some techniques such as body language, nodding our head, making small comments that shows the other that we are there for them and listening. There are also methods such as paraphrasing what we heard in order to show that we understood what is said and in order to fulfill the need of being understood. Another interesting technique is to give people time to think about what they said and why are they talking by waiting before commenting. This also gives us an opportunity to suspend our judgments for a while and truly see what is going on. I observe in life that having someone understand us, makes us want to share more with them and increases our energy and sympathy towards them. That's why I believe we should practice active listening and become a good listener.

The C.C. Process

This will be a brief blog about the conscious communication process, as we spent the last 3 hours mostly on practicing basic examples of the OFNR method which we use to make people more inclined to listen our further comments. What was important about the stating an observation is that it should be specific in time and context. "He never brushes his teeth" vs "I didn't brush his teeth last week". While expressing feelings, we should be careful about offending the others with accusations such as saying "I feel excluded". This phrase is the same as "you excluded me" thus it is an accusation. We should also take responsibility about our feelings. Saying "I feel sad because you left me", means that you are the reason of my sadness but the actual reason of me being sad is that I don't enjoy being alone. Someone leaving me is the stimulus in this example.
One thing I didn't find correct with the class was about the examples of expressing needs. The examples were in conflict with the theories we were thought as some strategies were accepted as needs. The example that stuck in my mind is the one were "spending the evening together" is considered a need. I recall that we were told that actions we do to fulfill our needs are strategies therefore spending the evening together is a strategy to fulfill the need of companionship, entertainment and such...

Translating Messages

The main aim of the last class was to give us an idea how to perceive the messages people give to us or how to shape our expressions in a way which doesn't disconnect us from the outside environment. Considering that the best way to live is to live in a life of connection, we should tell what we think in a way that people can understand what is important for us. Learning this process of having a proper communication we were thought is important because there isn't any guarantee of connection in life, it depends on what we say. The prof used the phrase "enemy fire" which each of us was very familiar with the concept as we face it in our everyday life. We were focusing on avoiding doing the enemy fire, as it only disconnects the conversation. We learned a method which is hard to use in real life because when in a conflict, we face high temper and it becomes hard to think. Taking long breaths is a possible way to get rid of our anger, then we can use the formula we were thought, Observation-Feelings-Needs-Request. This is a formula we can use either to connect to our world or the other person's. "I observe ... , therefore I feel..., because I need... . Evaluating the situation using these sentences makes us understand what is alive for the other person and increases our energy to connect and solve problems.
Many people tells their judgments as if they were facts. In my opinion this is the most common reason of disconnection. An interesting note from the class was that compliment is also a judgement, which makes people addicted to it and even tough it works great in short term, its long term results make people's performance drop if it stops.

Human Needs

What an educating week this was right? Understanding human needs to be able to construct firm relationships is a great strategy for someone seeking for improvement in his career.`In every moment of life, everything we do is serving needs.` This is why we must understand what people we interact really needs, the respond producing the best possible outcome. Understanding needs of others is actually so simple because these are human needs thus we also have the same needs. They might be biological needs, psychological needs, social needs... Whatever need it is, we know that it is universal. So, if I have the same needs with you, understanding my needs will help me understand you. One thing which could confuse us is the difference between needs and strategies. Strategies are the actions we chose to do in order to fulfill a need. For example, doing donation and helping people is a strategy which people use to fulfill their need to respect themselves. In this point, there is something that I don't agree with what has been said in class. They said that money is a need. In my opinion, money can only be a strategy when considered that we earn money to fulfill many different needs varying such as self esteem or eating, moreover, we can fulfill these needs with other ways than money.
To conclude, I would like to mention that with the advancing technology and globalization, we are now connected with many people all the time. We should be capable to understand that we are parts of processes in each others lives making us dependent to each other. When considering to respond to someones action, we should be able to figure what is the need behind it, and how we might be able to address that need, in order to create the environment we would prefer to live in. `When we communicate, we open our vulnerability.`

The Science of Happiness - The Formula of Success

The second class of MGMT 450 could be summered under two topics. The first one is `success`. We discussed that in life, everyone is in search of success. But success could differ for every single one of us. Thus we need to find our own success formula and then start to apply it with our lives. Being successful, in the sense that i am using here, isn't something you can measure or count, on contrary, it is an abstract conclusion of our choices in life. A continuous healthy psychology is the success and that should be the precious reward that we chase through our lives. That's why I think Giuseppe told us that psychologist are coaches guiding us trough life in order to discover our success formula.
Positive Science teaches us our personal strengths in order to find our success formula. On the managerial context, we were told in class that we should always have the end in our mind when we start a challenge. We should always focus on the solution but not on the problem. Positive science guides us to create an image of success in our minds and not focusing on the possible failure. Knowing the desired end, it is always easier to step forward, thus we should ask ourselves the question, `where do we want to go with our lives?`
This question we ask to ourselves is a perfect way to connect the first topic to the second. Our second topic in class was 'happiness'. The pursue of the state `happy`, moreover the state `happier` as it is told to be more constant and dynamic. In order to be happier, we need to know where we stand in our lives. Is it a pleasant life? Is it a good life? Is it a meaningful life? The professor goal was not to lead us towards any of the adjectives that I stated before life but he was trying to teach us that in order to be happier, we should know in which and why we live. In his own words, `build the conscience of where you go in life and what is your objective.`
I would like to conclude this post with stating another managerial advise he gave us as I am more interested to approach the class on the career context, `the task of leaders is to identify people`s strengths and create an alignment of strengths that makes the system weaknesses irrelevant.` I think the sentence speaks for itself, no need for explanation.

Introduction and Goals

I would like to start blogging about the class I attend (MGMT 450 Communication and Conflict Management) by shortly stating why I decided to take this course through the summer bridging my junior and  senior years in Sabancı University. 

 Considering I am doing a very intense internship at Finansbank for more than a month and ongoing, it would be madness to add another responsibility to which could have been a beautiful summer enjoyed with friends. On the other hand, knowing that I couldn't graduate without fulfilling the credit requirements with the summer extra credits, attending summer school was inevitable for me. 

So I decided to take a course which I can stay focused on sunny summer days and which I can apply what I learn in real life through my internship experience. MGMT 450 seemed the perfect course considering my criteria and I hope to think the same way when I conclude the course.

Having done with my goals of taking the course, I can now start to talk about what we covered in our first class with our Italian professor Giuseppe. I will try to state what attracted my attention and my own ideas about those subjects day by day by this blog.

Our first course was an introduction to how communication is important, what makes people happy and understanding how people think. We watched a video in order to understand how important communication and using language is. I think that it is essential to use the right language while we want to control people's responses to an action. We should be able to see through other minds by empathy. A very beautiful approach has been thought in class about this, whenever someone helps another, they both benefit. People earn not only by taking, but also by giving. It feels great helping someone in need of our help and seeing them be grateful isn't it?

We also started to talk about importance of communication in our careers and in business environments. "Thanks god its Monday" was a perfect way to what we should expect from work environment. I feel that way right now with my internship but of course I realize that I am at the very beginning of my career and its too early to talk about this.

Lastly, I want to mention how we could hurt ourselves with violent communication just like we hurt others. When we address ourselves with sentences starting with " I am", It might be very dangerous for our mental health, thus, nonviolent communication is not only important for our social life, it is also essential for our inner peace.