In Lighter Vein

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/ and "Leadership & Management" on http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com)
 

Laugh it Out

Did you hear the following?:

• There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman; before marriage and after marriage.
• Husband searching keywords on Google "how to tackle wife?" Google search result: "still searching".

Life Management and Life Skills: Life Time Model

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Life Time Model

First and foremost, start building up your life time model- it’s the way you will like to be guided in your life. This model will be your basis for shaping up your value structure, thinking patterns, decision making, objectives or goals, road maps, skills, systems, technology, techniques, tools, tasks and actions etc.

At the core of the model comes your chosen value structure consisting of the fundamental principles that you will like to stick to throughout your life. While you may review these principles and add, delete or modify them, by and large these principles are more permanent than anything else in your life. They are the fundamentals and as you know, fundamentals do not change so very easily. The principles will be not more than 10 to 12 or so in numbers and they will seem extremely simple to articulate. Its another matter that at times these may start looking tough to follow. Tough they may be, yet, you need to be guided by them and not waver if you wish to lead an enriched life.

Some examples of these fundamental values or principles are (this is only an indicative list and not necessarily comprehensive):

• I will speak truth.
• I will not hurt or exploit myself and others emotionally and physically.
• I will respect myself and everyone else.
• I will not indulge in corrupt practices.
• I will love my wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters unconditionally.
• I will perform my professional activities as per the profession’s requirements and values.

Next come the major choices of your life: choice of your branch(es) of education and profession(s), choice of your spouse, choice of the geographical places where you will like spend most of your life, number of children you will like to have, choices of educational and career opportunities for your spouse and children, choice of manner(s) in which you will like to look after your parents in their old age, choice of house(s) you will like to live in etc.

Around the above-mentioned cores, you can now start setting up your life time goals. You may also look into your immediate goals, short term goals, medium term goals and long term goals. As you start moving towards achievement of your goals, you may feel like revising your goals and that is perfectly OK. You will have to work out your goals for your personal, family, professional and social life. The goals will have to be achieved on a time line. Your goals need to be quantified as much as possible and should be measurable so that at any point in time you can check back if you are moving ahead towards achieving your goals as desired.

Goal achievement will demand that you decide on the tasks and activities that need to performed by you and others. You will like to outsource certain tasks and activities and you may like to do certain of them by yourself. Accordingly, you will have to acquire the required and necessary knowledge and competencies/skills.

Along side you may have to decide on the selection and use of appropriate systems, technology, techniques and tools. These may consist of hardware and software. You will have to acquire necessary knowledge and skills to get the best results out of these.

The above-mentioned description allows you to construct a life time model that specifically suits you. There is no generic solution for such a model.

Mission Statement for Families

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

In effective, successful and happy families, husband and wife implicitly or explicitly talk about, discuss and deliberate and at times write down on what kind of mission statement they should formulate for their family. The mission statement then provides them the guidance they need to run their families. It is always a good idea to write down the mission statement so that it has the required clarity and it can be shared with family members easily and correctly.

Given below is an elaborate or comprehensive specimen mission statement for families (you need not copy it for your family but definitely can pick up some clues from it to work out the mission statement for your family).

-        (Unconditional) love, affection, care, consideration, concern, respect, decency, decorum, trust (no secrecy or ulterior motives), right kind of values- the foundation principles (no compromise on them).

-        Promoting, facilitating, innovating and nurturing emotional, intellectual and physical intimacies between husband and wife and developing short term and long term friendship, companionship and camaraderie (the three words may have similar meanings but just to heighten the importance of this aspect of husband-wife relationship, all the three are used). However, despite being intimate, discourage development of familiarity between the two- give each other the deserved space in adequate measures (at times you may feel free not to share few thoughts and things with each other; it’s OK so far as you are not being secretive).

-        Creating, developing and maintaining physically comfortable and hygienic environment and constantly improving it.

-        Creating, developing and maintaining decent emotional, intellectual and meaningful environment and constantly improving it.

-        Emphasis on higher levels of education with superior academic performance and constantly sharpening it- for each family member.

-        Facilitating constant growth of every family member in many directions.

-        Changing for the better continually- shed rigidities and practice flexibility in thinking, behaviors, manners, habits, actions, living style, use of technology etc as appropriate with changing situations and time.

-        Emphasis and constant attention on family health and improving overall health status of all the family members.

-        Creating and maintaining financially sound status (immediate and long term)- desire and efforts to earn more and acquire and utilize the resources prudently with no wastage.

-        Open communication, empathy and cooperation (no resentments, no sulking, no competition or no need to prove to each other or to evaluate/judge/criticize each other or to constantly correct each other, readiness in apologizing and forgiving) among husband and wife and children- promoting  overall positiveness.

-        Facilitate creating an environment where each family member can develop an eye for recognizing others’ qualities and learn to appreciate and praise the other family members generously and yet genuinely- pretensions and fakeness to be kept away and no politics please.

-        Giving family a decent social status. (Therefore, doing a socially respectable and meaningful profession- self employment or otherwise- becomes important. Meaningful jobs, good organizations, good designations, good perks etc).

-        High level of attention to the rightful growth of/achievement by children so that they become excellent human beings, superior professionals and capable of nurturing their own families in the best ways when they start one of their own.

-        Help develop right kind of maturity (of thoughts, ideas, reactions/responses and actions) in each family member.

-        Having full faith and confidence in the overall soundness of family without any need to strike comparisons with others/other families/societies of the world- developing absoluteness and not comparisons (do comparisons only for the purpose of learning from others and not for competing or for feeling inferior or superior after comparisons).

-        Creating and maintaining overall happiness for all the family members as individuals and family as a whole (the togetherness).

Do You Have the Right Kind of Skill Sets and Competencies to Run Your Marriage and Family Effectively?

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

On the topic of competencies we suggest couple of very good articles on the URLs given below:

(Competencies- Life Management) http://shyam-bhatawdekar.blogspot.com/
(Competency Matrix) http://competency-matrix.blogspot.com/

(Soft Skills) http://soft-skills-competencies.blogspot.com/

(Soft Skills/Competencies: Details of Each Competency) http://soft-competencies-skills.blogspot.com/

(Life Skills) http://life-skills-competencies.blogspot.com/

(All the six lessons of tutorial on "building intimacy in your marriage/relationship are now available in a book form titled "The Romance of Intimacy". The book is already benefitting a good number of married couples and couples in relationships. You can obtain the book as eBook from the Nuubuu link http://nbuu.co/bi and as printed book from Amazon)

Isn't it true that you invest a lot of your efforts, time and money in acquiring and maintaining your skill sets and competencies to become and remain effective in your chosen profession? And it is never
been a one time job for you. As the profile of your profession changed with time and due to technological advancements and many other factors, you made sure to acquire those extra skill sets and competencies that your profession demanded.

You could have never become an effective software engineer if you had not acquired the proficiency
in coding in various computer languages. You acquired knowledge and then used that knowledge by actually writing the programs that finally ran well. And it has been a never ending job- acquiring knowledge and putting it to test.

The  same is true with any profession. Every profession requires certain technical and human skills and competencies and you make conscious efforts to acquire them. You you do it over years and years.

Now ask yourself a question. Did you do the same thing when you entered into your marriage and then started your family? Does starting, maintaining and building up a great married and family life not
need or demand some specific skill sets and competencies for you to become an effective spouse and a parent?

Did you identify those skill sets and competencies? Did you introspect if you possess them- are you good at them? If you did not have them already, did you take actions to seek knowledge about them, acquire them and then put them into practice again and again so that you became proficient in them.

Can you really lead a great married and family life without doing so?

If you have not done it till now, nothing much is lost. It's never too late. Start now.

Interpersonal Relations in Family

For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/

(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Interpersonal Relations among Family Members

Types of Interpersonal Behavior

Type 1 •Invites respect and compliance when you manage, direct, advice, teach and lead
Type2 •Invites acceptance and trust when you help, support, sympathize and empathize
Type 3 •Invites help and tenderness when you agree and act in friendly manner
Type 4 •Invites advice and help when you seek help, trust, admire and respect
Type 5 •Invites arrogance and superiority when you act shyly, modestly, dutifully, sensitively and obediently
Type 6 •Invites punishment and rejection when you rebel, protest, be undisciplined, be skeptical
Type 7 •Invites hostility and resistance when you attack, punish and be unkind
Type 8 •Invites distrust and inferiority when you exploit, show-off, reject and boast

First four behavior patterns will support healthy interpersonal relationships.

Pre-requisites for Better Interpersonal Relations

• Respectful mutual communication
• Win-win relationships
• Improving balance in others' emotional bank account
• Non-exploitative mutual transactions
• No ulterior motives
• Mutual trust
• Cooperation and support
• Genuine praise to each other
• Be of benefit to each other
• Take genuine interest in each other

Improve Your Score on Emotional Bank Balance for Better Interpersonal Relations

• Interpersonal relations flourish when you open an emotional bank account with the other person and make emotional deposits into it. Your emotional deposits build up the trust level with the other person and then, he likes to maintain relationship with you.
• More the emotional deposits made by you with the other person, more safe will he feel with you. It is a measure of trust and therefore, safeness into a relationship.
• You can build up your emotional bank balance with the other person by developing understanding with him, showing courtesy and care, attending to his small and big needs, keeping up the promises made, maintaining personal integrity etc.
• Once your reserve or balance is high, even if you make a withdrawal by doing the acts opposite to what have been described in the earlier point, the other person will not mind it that much and will be willing to continue the relationship in the same smooth manner.
• With high deposits and balance, your communication, even if it is less than perfect, is very well understood by the other person in the right spirit. Thus, interpersonal communication becomes simpler and easier.
• You can easily withdraw from your emotional bank deposit when you show disrespect, behave discourteously, play superior etc. As this balance depletes, the trust level goes down and the quality of interpersonal relationship decreases.
  

To Love Your Child, Love Each Other: You Have No Escape From Loving Each Other

A child wants wholesome love from both the parents for growing into a normal adult and human being. He wants love from his father. He wants love from his mother. He wants love from them together as a parental unit or a parental entity. He wants love in home.

If his parents do not love each other, the child will never be able to get a sense of living in a complete home. Something is missing somewhere, in home, for him. He will never be able to sense of love from them together as a parental entity. For him, love from parents as one single unified entity is missing. He will never grow normally.

When husband and wife love each other, it produces a kind of synergistic love in home and that the child enjoys, it is very healthy for him. That is many times more than when only mother showers her love on him or only father showers his love on him in their separate ways.

So, there is no escape from loving each other since you already love your child so much. Love each other Mr husband and Mrs wife, you don't lose anything in love. Love does not need financing or rocket science or strategic management. Then, love only multiplies.

Open Communication

Open and Objective Communication between Husband and Wife

It is told time and again that one of the keys to successful married life is open and objective communication between husband and wife.

But many people doubt if it is truly possible in real life though it looks good on paper.

To dispel their doubt, it needs to be emphasized that it is possible but for that both husband and wife have to put some efforts to make it happen; it's not automatic. It does not happen on its own.

To accomplish meaningful communication between husband and wife, it is necessary to adhere to the following tips (not in any particular order):

• Treat the other person as an individual, you do not possess him/her.
• Both are at par; you are neither other's boss nor subordinate. You are life partners.
• Give respect to each other.
• Remember that each person is a bundle of qualities and defects. So look at other's qualities and let the defects not hover on you.
• Listen intently.
• Speak politely.
• Do not react immediately to what the other person just spoke. Think and then respond appropriately. Try to understand what the other is saying and then pause and then respond.
• Do not nitpick.
• Do not show tantrums.
• Do not personalize the issues; stay on a subject.
• Do not get angry if the other person is saying something that you do not agree or do not like.
• If you do not agree or do not like what the other is saying, tell the other person politely about it.
• Be ready to accept what is more correct or more appropriate and be flexible to implement it.
• Once you agree about the outcome of the communication, implement what was agreed upon.
• Update your own knowledge on the subject being discussed. If you are ignorant or know less, listen to the person who has better knowledge.
• Show flexibility in action, shed stubborn behavior.
• Learn to compromise on the points where the agreement or consensus has not reached. Marriage is not a win-lose or lose-win game. No one loses, no one wins. Both have to win, the family has to win.
• At times, give in on matters of low importance. You do not become any less in doing so.
• Keep your egos in abeyance while communicating with each other.
• Demonstrate your affection and care to each other while communicating.
• Collaborate and do not compete. Communication is not the exchange or show-off of your wits.
• Do not play psychological games with each other. Be genuine to each other.
• There should never be any ulterior motives or hidden agendas in communication between husband and wife.
• Keep the family objectives upper most.
• If you have not been able to resolve an issue in the first bout of communication, decide upon another time for another communication session. Then communicate again with open mind and more information on the topic on the new date and time.
• Hug and kiss and make up for any slips in communication.