Volume 1, November 2014
People Matter- A Cynergy Club Initiative
With our introductory volume, we’re sharing an amazing write up by a first year student of our campus, Anurag Bora. This is a synopsis of the book “QUIET”.
Welcome readers The mission of the Human Capital Club is to help future leaders use human capital to drive global change in their organizations. Cynergy highlights the potential of human capital management by covering pertinent topics at lectures and networking events; topics ranging from change management to the intersection of business and human capital strategy to building and maintaining high-performance organizations. Through this publication, we wish to reach out to all those we can and spread data and facts about the vast and fast changing world of Human Resource Management. We’ll unfurl all about the world of HR so that we can gain out of it together. Happy reading! Akshat Arora Junior Co-head Cynergy Club
Quiet Fortitude
“This is where the walls fall And facades fade When the loud ones talk And I, filtrate So the remnants can precipitate To where my thoughts shall collate” -Anonymous I was 10 when I went for camping along with my cousins and friends. I never forget to make my Walkman and some books on a trip like this. Sitting in a room quietly was what I had been doing the whole day (reading a book), when my cousin came and asked me “Why are you being so mellow?” I wanted to tell him that this was just ‘me being me’, but then I decided to keep my book away and went out with him. In the evening, when everyone was out playing ‘dumb charades’, I was found listening to a Backstreet Boys song in a corner. This time my cousin came up with a new line, “Come on! Don’t be an INTROVERT!” So I decided to keep my Walkman along with the book in my bag, and there they stayed for the rest of the camp.
EDITOR’S MESSAGE
At that age I didn’t understand that why people make introverts feel so guilty about wanting to go just by themselves for sometimes. So what I did was what most of the introverts do and that is pretend to be extrovert. Somewhere deep within I knew that introverts are excellent the way they are, but for years I have denied this intuition, and have therefore decided to pursue PGDM this year maybe because I wanted to tell and prove to myself that I can be bold and assertive too. It is a fact that one-thirds to a half of the population are introverts. So that’s one out of every two and three people we know and all of them are a subject to this bias of the society which believes that extroverts are better.
“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men, no Machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” With great pride, enthusiasm & anticipation I invite you all to read the inaugural issue of “PEOPLE MATTERS” – a new stop to guide and create awareness on human resources”. Let’s experience, learn and transform .I look forward to our journey together. Karishma Arora Editor- PEOPLE MATTER
Being an introvert is not being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about how you respond to stimulation (social stimulation). Extroverts crave for a lot of stimulation whereas introverts are most efficient when they are in a quieter environment. So the key to maximizing talents is for us to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us. Our most important institutions, our institutions and workplaces, are designed for introverts. We have a belief system that we call the ‘group think’, which assumes that our talents will be maximized by working in an oddly gregarious place. When I was in school we used to sit in rows and used to do all my homework autonomously. However, now in college we have these rotating chairs so that the students can easily face each other. Even in topics that are debatable, teachers ask us to make a group project and these are topics where my point of view is entirely different to my group mates point of view. For example, “Social Networking – Good or Bad.” Topics that entail solo flights of thought, students are expected to act as committee members. And for the students who prefer to go by themselves or work on such topics, they become the outcasts or even worse. Even for teachers today, an ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research. The same happens in workplaces too. Most people today work in open workplaces, without walls, where they are subject to constant noises. Even when it comes to leadership, most of these positions in organizations are given to extroverts. Introverts are passed over for these positions, even though they are more careful.
Adam Grant, at Wharton School, has found introverted leaders deliver better results when compared to extroverts, because when they are managing proactive employees, they are more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can unwittingly, get excited and start putting their stamp on things, as a result other people’s ideas may not as easily bubble up to the surface. Today we are told that to be great is to be bold, and to be happy is to be sociable. We are therefore making room for a smaller or narrower range of personality styles. Some of our most transformative leaders in history have been introverts. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi- all of these people were soft spoken and even shy. And they even took the spotlight even when every bone in their body was telling them not to do so. Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, ‘introverts’ and ‘extroverts’ said there’s no person who is a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said that such a person would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. ‘Ambiverts’ fall in the middle of the introvert-extrovert spectrum, they have the best out of this world. I am not saying that one type is better than another but what I do mean is we need a better balance. When psychologists look at lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas, but also have a serious streak of introversion in them. Solitude is a crucial ingredient of creativity. So, Darwin took long walks alone in the woods. Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla, California. He was afraid to meet the young children who read his books for the fear that they were expecting him as a jolly person and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona. Steve Wozniak invented the first apple computer sitting alone in his cubical in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at the time. And he says that he would never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up. Now this does not mean that we should stop collaborating, and Steve Wozniak also came together with Steve Jobs to start Apple computers, but this means that solitude matters to these people and for them this is the air that they breathe. We have known these powers of solitude from ancient times, and it has just happened recently that we have begun to forget it. When we look at world’s major religions, we find seekers- Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad- who used to go into the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they bring back to the rest of the community. So no wilderness, no revelations. If we look at the insights of contemporary psychology it turns out we can’t even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring or mimicking their opinions. The groups often follow the instructions and opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there is zero co-relation between being the best talker and having the best ideas. We may be following the person with the best ideas or we may not. And do we really want to leave this upon chance? It will be better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment.
Now if all of this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? One reason may be because we are very much influenced by the US and the western societies value man of action more than the man of contemplation. This is why we are setting our schools and our workplaces in a wrong manner. Another reason may be because we are in the 21 st century and have evolved from an agricultural economy to a world of big business. People move from small towns to cities and instead of working with groups they have known all their lives, they now work with people who are new to them. So, qualities like magnetism and charisma have suddenly become more important. Now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant or because I have anything against team work. The religions who send their sages to lonely mountain tops also teach us to trust and love. And the problems in the fields of science and economics are so vast and complex that we require armies of people coming together to solve them. But what I mean is that more freedom should be given to introverts to be themselves, so that they will come up with their unique solutions to these problems. Susan Cain states three calls for action for those who share this vision: Number 1: Stop the madness for constant group work. Offices should encourage casual, cafĂŠ style types of interactions so that people come together and serendipitously exchange ideas. It is great for introverts as well as for the extroverts. But we need much more privacy and freedom and much more autonomy while working. Same is the case with schools. We need to be teaching kids how to work together, but we also have to teach them how to work on their own. Number 2: Go to wilderness. Be like Buddha, have your revelations so that we all stand to unplug and get inside our own heads a little more often. Number 3: Introverts have the impulsive to guard very carefully but occasionally, they would open up to the world because the world needs them. They should gather the courage to speak, speak softly.
Just for FuN…
News from the campus FIIB’s Fourth Edition of Innovation in HR: Gearing for 2020 concludes on campus September 20, 2014 Organizations can foresee a huge scope and opportunity with Gen Y or Millennials who currently comprise of 600 million of our current population. However, studies say that organizations need to transform their style of working in order to acquire and retain the Millennials. To discuss the growing need of innovation for hiring the millennials, Fortune Institute of International Business dedicated the fourth edition of its ‘Innovation in HR: Gearing for 2020 Series’, to “Attracting the Millenials” organized on 20th September and invited industry experts to share their opinion about the same. The Conclave started with SaraswatiVandana followed by lighting up the lamp by our Key Note Speaker, Mr. Rajeev Kumar, Vice President- HR, NIIT Technologies Limited.
Concluding his talk he said, “Millennials want same things as other generations but they prioritize differently.”The Keynote session was followed by a panel discussion.
Akshat Arora Jr. Co-head
News from the campus Cynergy club conducted a quiz competition titled “learning through videos- Gen Y’s style”. It's my pleasure to announce the names of the winners for the quiz contest conducted by Cynergy (HR CLUB). Cheers!!!!!!!!!!! Winning teams from section A1.) Anurag Bora and Monika 2.) Megha Chawla and Jagtar Singh
Winning teams from section B1.) Navneet Kaur and Sakshi 2.) Deepesh Sharma and Puneet Pal Congratulations to all the winners. Akshat Arora
A session by our alumni FIIB welcomed Ms. Upasana for conducting a session on recruitment preparation as the placement season commenced. Here’s a glimpse of the session; students being oriented on ‘Talent Acquisition’:-
PEOPLE MATTER!
Dear readers, we would appreciate all your suggestions. We plan to bring for you a lot more as our publication expands. Do send in articles, write-ups, or anything which you think is relevant and wants it to get published in the coming volumes. Feel free to contact our editor- karishma.arora@fiib.edu.in
“Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them; they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.” ― Ken Robinson
Akshat Arora- Cynergy Club Jr. Co-head Karishma Arora- People Matter’s editor Vineet Saini- Volume Designer