Being Manager - your choice or not

When you are struggling with a deadline or dealing with delicate decisions, the last thing you want to deal with is "people". When the fight is really on and the battle is undecided, you want your team to act co-operatively, quickly, rationally. But this is what happens, and as a manager you have to deal with it. Some are totally beyond your control; but you do have influence over many factors which affect your staffs and so it is your responsibility to ensure that your influence is a positive one.

As the leader of a team, you have the authority to sanction, encourage or restrict most aspects of their working day, and this places you in a position of power and responsibility.

Consider your behaviour. Consider the effect you would have if every morning if you walked over to Alex's desk and told him what he was doing wrong. Of course you would never be so destructive - provided you thought about it. Simple habits can have a huge impact upon your rapport with your team.

Take another example: suppose you are a 'busy manager' type you respond brusquely to questions and interruptions; guess what will happen?

Probably your team will leave you alone. They will not raise problems, they will not question your instructions, they will struggle on bravely, feeling unsupported. Your simple behaviour may result in errors, mis-directed activity and frustration. So if you do want to hear about problems, tell the team so and react positively when you hear of problems.

Motivation. When thinking about motivation it is important to take the long-term view. What you need is a sustainable approach to maintain enthusiasm and commitment from your team.

To motivate, look at: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, and advancement. These are what your team needs; loads-of-money is nice but not nearly as good as being valued and trusted.

Achievement. As the manager, you set the targets. This, will have a dramatic effect upon your team's sense of achievement. If you make them too hard, the team will feel failure; if too easy, the team feels little.

Recognition. is about feeling appreciated. It is knowing that what you do is seen and noted, and preferably by the whole team as well as by you, the manager. If people do something well and then feel it is ignored, why would they bother to do it well next time.

The work itself should be interesting and challenging. But few managers have only interesting, challenging work to distribute: there is always the boring and mundane to be done. Therefore, this is a management problem for you to solve. You must actually consider how interesting are the tasks you assign and how to deal with the boring ones.

Responsibility is the most lasting. Assigning responsibility is a difficult judgement since if the person is not confident and capable enough, you will be held responsible for the resulting failure.

Advancement. The long-term issues of promotion, salary rises, job prospects; and the short-term issues of increased responsibility, the acquisition of new skills, broader experience. Your team members will be looking for the former, you have to provide the latter and convince them that these are necessary steps for advancement they seek. They must feel that they are learning everyday.

People-problems. There are bound to be problems - as a manager, you have to solve or at least contain them. Some problems should be ignore at your peril. Problems such as: "Alex is just lazy". Such people can poison the working environment, however, these descriptions could also be totally unhelpful.

As a manager, you must provide the solution. It is best to work on one problem at a time because this simplifies the analysis. Remember, by addressing one, other related problems are often affected also.

Finally, look carefully at how you behave and whether the current situation is due to your inattention to the human factor: you might be the problem, and the solution.

Immaturity at the workplace

We cannot assume that all people are functioning at the same level behaviorally and emotionally in the workplace. It is not surprising when we encounter a co-worker who responses to what we thought was a simple comment with an emotional outburst that resembles that of an eight-year-old.

How to identify them:
1. Inability to compromise with the rules of the workplace and with co-workers. Any group of people who spend time together must be able to compromise at times and to realise that not everyone can have their way at every turn of the day.

2. Self-defensiveness and excuse making when confronted with a reality at work. They do this, so that it can easily be divert one from the original issues.

3. Avoidance of responsibility for work or interactions with other workers.

4. Misuse or response to authority, which leads to resentments. It often results from a false sense of entitlement. “I am also one of the managers and I do not have to respect you.”

5. A tendency to revert to quarreling rather than communication toward conflict resolution.

6. Complacency toward making efforts toward quality work. It is different from being lazy. Complacency is more the lack of caring about the outcome of a project.

7. Try to make others responsible for their own emotions. It is always someone else’s fault that the emotionally immature worker is having a difficulty at work.

Well, the good news is that any one can mature emotionally at any age. The bad news is the workplace is not the best place to help a person grow up emotionally. Especially in the area of interpersonal relationships, this action can be very disruptive.

A manager can put into place ways to hold their staff accountable in the workplace by having it done in a mature way. Do this with a quiet, consistent, response that calls for the staff member to look at their own behaviour and never react at the same level of immaturity as the staff member.

Being Different at Work

I want to stand out from my colleagues at work and I mean, career development. It is about constantly improving myself and getting the most out of my job and work life. The toughest is figuring out how to stand out in a good way by being aware of the consequences of what I think, say, and do.

People have confidence in us if we have confidence in ourselves, the success of self-confidence. We gain confidence as our skill and knowledge grows. We must not be afraid to try new things, when immediate success isn't as likely as when we do things we've already mastered. It is easier to overcome small mistakes, and small wins keep us motivated and to keep us moving forward.

Performance feedback - Get our chance to talk to our manager about where we are, where we want to be, and how we might get there, in our job and in our career. Your attitude about receiving positive and negative feedback will help determine the outcome and to reach our goal.

Most of us have to do something to earn a living, but few of us do not have a choice about what we do. If you're in a job where you have no energy or enthusiasm in the morning, watch the clock all day, pray for the weekend all week, and long for vacations all year, we're spending about your life in the wrong place. We have to be where we want to be or to have a clear plan for getting there.

Doesn't it feel great to get through the day without challenging ourselves to learn something new or do something great? No? You're right. Work hard to be the best you can be at work and home. You might be surprised how your attitude changes when you seek out challenges and fully commit to what you do.

Listen to our own conversations and notice how often you say the word I: 'I think,' 'I want,' 'I wish,' etc. We tend to think in terms of I, which is okay until it gets in the way of thinking about and relating to others. Open yourself to new ideas, innovations, changes, and different points of view. Don't go through life thinking 'I' is all there is.

Don't use inappropriate language. The language hurt people working around us. Swearing is nearly always offensive to somebody, and it's a bad habit to get into at work.

You can complain, but offer solutions. You can argue, but do it as reasonable and respectful dialogue. Organizations need people to challenge the status quo, and they need people to disagree; otherwise, nothing changes or gets better.

It can add spice to the workday to, to gossip, to talk about people who aren't around. Don't do it, don't encourage it, and avoid listening to it. It occurs so often, you will really stand out and earn the respect of your manager and coworkers if you don't do it.

Our private lives don't have to be private. Tell your coworkers about your family, your neighbors, your work in the community, etc. Avoid, however, going into great detail or length about personal problems from outside work.

Don't talk about sex, politics, or religion. We know these subjects are taboo at social gatherings; they are at work as well. Few things will spur a conflict, or at least, leave a negative impression of us with others.

Always be professional and mature, and watch our appearance. Be professional by meeting commitments and respecting our responsibilities to others and ourself. Have fun at work, and at the same time, let people know we can handle difficult situations with a level head.

In a rapidly changing work environment, people who stand still are actually moving backward. Show initiative and create our own opportunities. Read widely, observe, listen, use a mentor, volunteer and speak up. Look at life and work with the eyes of a learner and improver.

The person sitting beside you right now might be a CEO some day. Some relationships you form early in your career will last throughout it. Take care of the relationships we value or the ones we need to get things done. Build networks that help us and our career.

Make mistakes so that we grow and improve when we try new things and venture out of our comfort zone. However, don't make big mistakes that are hard to recover from, but create development plans that allow for small mistakes that we can learn from.

I heard this all the time: 'That's not my job.' 'I don't want to do that.' 'You don't pay me enough.' Managers have a demanding job that requires them to juggle many different tasks and tackle whatever comes along. So let's put in extra effort when needed.

We should have to "Think, say, and do the right things every day" attitude, and we will stand out at work and toward our career goals.

My New Balance REAL run - 19th Oct 08

I have not been activitely running since my last race. Its only left less than 1 week to the race day. Thinking about it, make me nervous already. So I decided to take out notes that I have filed on race preparation. Hope it is not too late..

• Mentally (is really very important).Think positively.


• A new running shirt and short stimulates you to do your very best.


• Stimulate yourself by thinking that you are in a great shape. This extra race tension ensures that of the hormone adrenaline there more is released, as a result of which you simply will run harder.


• Care that your running stuff is ready, so that gives no problems.


• We use no doping. However, you can use a placebo. It cost the necessary imagination to make a fool of you but it works.


• Carbohydrate-loading. This method we uses at the preparation of races, where the carbohydrate stock (or glycogen stock) in your muscles and liver is mainly consumed. In other words races longer than an hour. For the marathon it is certainly recommend. The intention is by means of correct training and with ate measures to increase this stock. A day or four for the race you do fast endurance training. The same day (and possibly the day before) you try to eat carbohydrate poor (see further). After the fast endurance training your carbohydrates have been consumed. If you take to the race much carbohydrate rich (see further) and little albumen and fat food, the body reacts by storing extra many carbohydrates in the muscles. Drink also more, because glycogen holds fought. Much success!


• Carbohydrate rich food: pasta, potatoes, fruit (bananas!), fruit juices, bread, sugar, sweets, carbohydrate supplements and gingerbread. Carbohydrate poor food: cheese, notes, quark, ice cream, flesh.


• Carbohydrates (such as sport spirits) that during the effort are taken can an important supplement form on the restricted carbohydrate stocks in the body.


• Strive after a feasible time.


• The aerobic energy supplies need some time (about 2 to 3 minutes) to do there work good. To save the carbohydrate stock run for this reason the first minutes of a race not too hard.


• Moisture loss: is disadvantageous for the achievement capacity. Drink regularly. The body can process approximately one liter per hour. At a high surroundings temperature, high humidity degree and bad ventilation the moisture loss are higher.


• A high quality of fat in the blood slows down the use of carbohydrates as an energy source. The hours for a race use therefore absolute none fat foodstuffs.


• The most people reach their physical top around 11 hours in the morning and around 6 hours in the afternoon.


• Running on head of a group, against the wind in can cost 10% more energy than in the group.


• Uses a half-hour for the race a strong cup black coffee: caffeine stimulates the fat burning in rather strong degree.


• A nose strip (such a plaster on your nose) does breathe you more easily.

And now I got to start preparing... Best of luck to me!

How Singapore is coping

Singapore's export-dependent economy may narrowly escape a recession in the third quarter, but the deepening financial crisis should prompt the central bank to ease monetary policy to avoid a sharper economic slowdown.

A recession is usually defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contractions. The global market meltdown has so far pushed New Zealand into a recession, and Japan is teetering on the brink of one.

Economists polled expect Singapore's central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), to loosen monetary policy by letting the local dollar appreciate at a slower pace.
The central bank sets policy by managing the Singapore dollar in a secret trade-weighted band against a basket of currencies, instead of setting interest rates.

The Singapore dollar fell to a one-year low against the US dollar as the global credit crisis deepened, raising concern economic growth will slow, Bloomberg news reported on Wednesday.

The currency fell for a sixth day, the longest stretch since Aug 12, on speculation investors will avoid emerging-market assets. The benchmark stock index slid to the lowest in more than three years.

Singapore's dollar is likely to weaken further.

The Singapore dollar fell to $1.4708 against the US dollar at 1.40pm in the city from $1.4647 late in Asia yesterday. It reached $1.4724, the weakest since Oct 10, 2007.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore will slow the pace of the local dollar's appreciation at its biannual foreign-exchange policy meeting on Oct 10, according to seven of 14 strategists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The nightmare on Wall Street reached Singapore on Wednesday, with The Straits Times Index nosediving a sharp 6.6 per cent. But it seems not many Singaporeans are too concerned.

Many said that they do not have investments in the stock market.

Most of those who expressed indifference felt that what was happening would not really affect them, at least not in the short term.

A weaker job market, lower pay and bonuses were other worries voiced.

(Extracted from Straitstimes)

Dealing with my Anger

Recently, I've seen myself getting angry over things that I don't think it is necessary at all.

The other day, I was playing badminton at a community centre and there was this family who came 10 minutes earlier to their schedule time and they are going to take over the same court that we are using. I wanted to play till the last min before we call it a day. But their standing around and staring at us playing badminton, irritated me and it affected how I played. And suddenly, this mother sneezed loudly into my face when I'm trying to retrieve the shuttercock that I missed to hit. What make me angry is the fact that she never bothered to apologise or say excuse me. Time just left 5 minutes, but their stares make me very difficult to carry on playing. When we started to step out of the court, they went right in to play without asking us whether we are still using it.

At that moment, I said loudly: 'If you wanna sneeze, cover your mouth because its very rude'. She stared at me with that emotionless face, and then I said to my partner: 'they never even asked whether we are done with our game.' I knew that they heard what I said and I continued: 'It's very distracting of them!' With that, we left the place feeling angry and we somehow did not enjoy the game at all.

I have always been in control managing my anger but I totally lose it that day. When I thought back about the incident, I realised it is just a small matter. And now I have to deal with my anger before it got worse.

My Angry Thoughts:

Anger exists in the mind and is a direct result of your thoughts. An event does not make you angry, but your interpretation of the event and how you think and feel can lead to anger. Certain things can be done to make the feelings of anger more controllable and manageable.

1- Admit you are angry. Recognizing that you are angry is the first step in dealing with it. Some people find it difficult to admit they are angry perhaps because they view their feelings as inappropriate or not valid. These people may deny their feelings therefore choosing not to deal with them.

2- Identify the source of the anger. Realizing what is causing you to feel angry is important in dealing with the real problem. Often the real problem can be confused with other issues or other emotions.

3 - Ask yourself why you are feeling angry? Recognizing the reason for your feelings of anger is an important step in dealing with the anger. After analyzing the reasons, you will decide in your mind if the anger is reasonable or justifiable. If you decide the anger is unrealistic you can diffuse the feelings. If you decide the anger is realistic, you can better decide how to deal with your feelings.

Now I need to control my anger:

There are techniques which can help you control your thoughts and in turn control your anger.

- Get rid of intense, angry feelings by letting your imagination diffuse some of the feelings. Allow yourself to imagine strangling the person who has made you feel angry, without actually carrying out the action. Imagery is a safer way for you to vent angry feelings.

- Do not allow the thoughts that are making you angry to continue. Shut down those thoughts by switching your concentration to something you find pleasant and enjoyable.

- People often get angry when their expectations are not met. Modifying your expectations can help you cope with anger. If you can afford more flexibility there is less chance for a situation to lead to anger.

- Being aware of why a person behaves a certain way or why a person is saying something will help promote understanding. Try putting yourself in the other person's shoes and viewing a situation from their perspective.

Overall, my health will be affected:

- blood pressure increases
- breathing and heart rate become more rapid
- muscles become tense

Anger which lasts a long time can physically damage the body. Anger is a form of energy which must be released and it is best to follow steps which help release it constructively. If anger is controlled, it can be wisely used to communicate and negotiate a resolution.

Beer is good!!

Let's talk about Beer:

A beer after playing a game of football, a long run, or a strenuous round of golf can be good for the body, scientists say.

In a rare piece of good news for those who like a pint, Spanish researchers say beer can help someone who is dehydrated retain liquid better than water. Prof Manuel Garzon, of Granada University, also claimed the bubbles in beer help to quench the thirst and that its carbohydrate content can help to replace lost calories.

I sure like these piece of news!

I heard if you go for this Singapore Beer Festival, you will get to experience the Chimay Grand Reserve - that is considered by many to be the equivalent of a Chateau Petrus wine in the world of beer. That is to say, even beers have Grand Reserves.

There are also the New Zealand's Harry's Brew and Peru's Cristal, which looks remarkably like the champagne in terms of clarity and colour.

Fortunately, beer experts prefer not to swirl and mouth-swish that pretentious wine drinkers seem so passionate about. Real beer drinker look for balance in the flavour and quality of beer.

Scott Kerkmans, the CEO of beer - of the Four Points hotels by the Sheraton Group, said that best beer is one served cold and in good company. " The perfect brew is one that is part of a great memory, an excellent drink that accompanies a spectacular moment".

( Sometimes, when I reflect back on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed - then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, 'It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver'.) - From the book Deep Thought by Jack Hande