career development

is time to close the accounts from 2007. Companies measure their results, evaluate the fulfilment of their annual operative programms, and based on it, fix the objectives. But the performance evaluation doesn´t only take on “what” has been reached, also analyzes “how”. I would like to talk about the second one.

The “how”, is based on values, which are given by responsables and collaborators. The passed year is summarized and commented. Let´s think about a scale from 1 to 10 to measure these values. Based on this, we will find two different ways to do the things.

On one hand the ones who like to evaluate with a 10 to all the team, as a way of avoiding conflicts and not getting too involved. On the other hand the strict ones, evaluating based on observed behaviours along the whole year.

Both ways are very different. My opinion?. Well, 10 is directly connected with the cowardice and the irresponsibility.  By giving a 10, we are not doing  any favour, and we will be only sending wrong messages which don´t help anyone to improve, promoting just self-satisfaction, comfort,  absence of critics, lack of achievements, and, sumarizing, it means that we haven´t spent a single minute during the whole year to analyze our team, which is the best feedback for the team to get better. Or even worse, this situation could be the consequence of  being afraid about saying “ugly” things telling just the “beautiful” ones. My question is, would you do the same to educate your kids?. I hope the answer will be not, if not, we all know what the result is.

I´d rather choose the courageous leader, the one who observes, generous to the team,  promoting everyday´s improvement,  involved in our professional development. These are the leaders of the future, the ones who every company need. Only through them we will make great places to work.

Once upon a time a giant, who usually took rest in a nice peaceful field. But one day a group of kids arrived and started playing and laughing around, disturbing the giant´s nap. Children loved that place and went there everyday, until the desperated giant started thinking what to do to recover his rest place ... 

Tired of not to sleep he went and suggested them a deal. “ I love your company, actually I love you to play here, is a privilege for me, and for that reason, I will pay you 3 euros each, everytime you come and play here”. The kids couldn´t believe such a generous attitude and happy took it...get money just for playing? ... how not?. The next day, they spent they whole afternoon playing there and the giant gave them 3 euros each as agreed.

The second day the kids were playing again, but that day, at the end of the game, the giant told them that 3 euros was a bit too much for him, he would be able to pay only 2 euros. Some of them didn´t like the idea but still, found it fair. The day after, the same thing happened, but the were offered only 1 euro. The kids, after long discussions, still found it interesting. The fourth day, the giant sit with them and told the group that, unfortunately he had not enough money and he couldn´t any longer pay them for playing there. At that point, the group got so disapointed that decided not to play there anymore. The giant  recovered his place and could rest there again.

Moral:  Kids liked to play there, and when the giant put a price to it, to play there, moved into a second place. The main goal then, was the money.

Things which move us can change if we forget the reason why we do them, and in that operation the loss is usually higher than the profits. Let´s always be clear on our motivations keeping them on mind when making decissions.

Let´s think about a daily situation. We are driving and suddenly we do some manoeuvre which annoys another driver. Inmediatly, he/she blows the horn and insults us. We have two possible reactions: replying in the same way, insulting and believing that it´s the other driver´s fault. His/her answer is not going to be kind… and the vicious circle begins, both drivers start an endless argument. We will only get a huge anger, stress and nerves. The second reaction would be assuming that our behaviour wasn´t appropriate and kindly excusing it. Most likely, the reaction of the driver will be playing down its importance and both will try to find the best solution.

Often, we´ll meet people asking themselves: Why do things never run well for me? Why can´t I develope my career?...and their answer usually is “…I´m so unlucky” or “…people are so foolish that they cannot see how much I can contribute”. Looking for similarities with the situation from the first paragraph is easy to identify the first reaction with the kind of person  mentioned above.

For multiple reasons, things not always happen as we want or expect from the begining. In this situation demotivation, discouragement and low performance appear. We start feeling we are offered an unfair treatment, which will drive us to the vicious circle again. We are part of a ring where our low profile will impede our boss to find on us what they expect to, our contribution to the day by day, and it curbs our professional growth. To face it, we reply with more dejection until the situation becomes unbearable and the relationship is broken. Very often in this case, we blame at the others.

The other way to do the things is not believing that everything we do is right,  that we never get wrong, or that the company doesn´t appreciate us enough. We must distrust ourselves, our behaviours, our job, and find the way to improve everyday. If still, our contribution is not taken into consideration and our career development is being curbed we have to analyse why and repare it. In this scenario the change comes from inside. We should give many reasons to led the others into trusting us. And if after this, the things are not in favour, we must keep the optimism not letting the discouragement beat our capacity and show the symptoms of the ´destruction´circle. Nobody will say that we haven´t worked hard, fighted and over all, we will be sure everything in our hand was done.

In this way will happen the second option shown in the example at the beggining of this article, and things will follow the right way. We will see that if we make a mistake we can rectify, that we can learn from mistakes and that `difficult´ moments many times depend of us.

Summarazing, I would reconmend everyone to think if we are in or out the vicious circle of behaviours.

Would you like to study an MBA in a pretigious school? Only a few people would say no. The main problem use to be the high cost and the  time availability.

Five years ago exploted the scandals in the accounts of Enron, Worldcom and some others. As a consequence of the problems founded in the ethical management of these companies, business schools from allover the globe were attacked. They were acused of being promoting a new business class with short term goals, where shareholders and own interests are pillars of their business activity.