Influence your peers to get ahead

Influence can be defined as your ability to bring about an effect in a gradual fashion by exerting pressure to modify, bias, or sway; to move; to persuade; to induce. We all might like to believe that our ability to manage and influence our boss will make the difference between how successful one is within the organization, but a lot of times your boss's perception is not the only one that is going to count. In organizations which have a matrix structure your ability to work with your peers and be counted as an influencer will impact the success of your efforts be it projects, initiatives or and even perception about your competence. In flatter organizations where there are very few levels, you might find establishing yourself as a leader will be easier if you are able to influence peers more than others.

Once you have built professional credibility here are a few things you could do to get started to work on your ability to influence your peers:-

• Build a informal network / relationship with your peers
• Take interest in their work / life and give objective and well meant advice
• Offer your peer your help with swaying nay Sayers and difficult to convince peers
• Involve peers your projects at the blue print stage
• Learn to build consensus
• Remember manipulation is not the same as Influencing

Work life balance – Learning from attempts to finding my balance and New research findings

My personal experiences at finding my work life balance have been moderately successful and more often than not, I have been able to get it right. I share below few tips that are more suitable for beginners, rather than gurus.

Question your motives and whether you need it right now:
If your new year resolution is to get promoted and get a fat pay increase then work life balance is not going to be very easy and therefore you are better of starting on this project next year.

Make it a priority:
If you need to achieve work life balance you have it make it a priority. If work life balance ranks 8th in your list of important things in life then you are again better off starting on this project when work life balance is needed or is a priority.

Acknowledging that balance is not 50/ 50:
Acknowledging that the balance won’t be 50 /50 is the first step. A near perfect balance is impossible to achieve at first go. While you may get there at some point of time or sometimes, it would be near to impossible to have a month or a week in the 50 / 50 or near to perfect format.

Make it personal:
Think about what is right and this is always very personal. Your work life balance cannot be the same as your spouses or your friends for example. While it might be a good idea to model your work life balance strategy on people who have got it right, its wrong to assume that their format of work life balance will work for you. I say this as what is right for you can be found only by you and not by simply adopting the format of people who you think have got it right.

Communicate with people who matter:
People who matter can be your spouse / significant other / your boss / your team, etc. It’s important to set expectations so that they know what you are trying to achieve and what they can do to help you get there.

Keep a journal / scrapbook to jot down your successful days:
Writing about days that were good and what you did that day will help you reflect back when you are probably in middle of stressful period when your work life balance has gone for a toss.

When all fails, try again:
And better luck next time! :)

While on work life balance, I thought some of the new research on work life balance might be an interesting read for some of you.

(Source: 2003 research quarterly on Work/Life Balance by Nancy R. Lock wood) SHRM

Latest research 2003 study reveals that employees are often preoccupied with work when not working, and when in the company of family and loved ones, experience an inability to be meaningfully engaged in nonwork spheres.23 As researcher Ezzedeen explains, “modern work has become knowledge based, fluid, and intellectual; overworked people think about work all of the time. For many people, work has become cognitively intrusive.”

To understand work/life balance, Professor Swiercz and Doctoral Candidate Ezzedeen of The George Washington University developed and tested a cognitive approach, the “Cognitive Intrusion of Work।” In simple terms, this means that work/life balance is not just about finding “physical time” to do all that needs to be done। Instead, and more importantly, it is about the “cognitive space” necessary to process, organize, and respond to the thinking demands of life within a complex society। Ezzedeen and Swiercz found that the cognitive intrusion of work results in lower job satisfaction, less happiness, a greater incidence of work/life conflict, and more frequent burnout.


Furthermore, their findings challenge long-held assumptions about the role of personality, gender, family status and age with regard to work/life balance. They found that the experience of intrusion transcends demographics and personality and is rooted instead in the design of the job and the organizational culture of the employer. Commenting on the potential impact of this research on organization policies and practices, Professor Swiercz states, “this research not only gives employers a new benchmarking tool, it also provides a new theoretical basis for understanding this important social issue from a research perspective.

Work life balance – Old and new thinking

Early theory’s of work life balance preached about identifying priorities and then spending equal amount of time on them or spending majority of time with the highest priority. Time management was looked at as the primary tool to help balance life and achieving peaceful and stress-free existance. Organizations also looked at work life balance as a gender thing and something that only women with children needed.

The term “work life balance” was coined in 1986, but there is some evidence that suggests that work life balance programs existed as early as 1930’s before world war II, where W.K. Kellogg Company created four six hour shifts to replace the traditional eight hour shifts and these new shifts resulted in increased employee morale and efficiency.

Times have changed since then and today there is a very thin line between where work ends and personal time begins due to the constantly present mobiles, emails and blackberry’s as well as changing roles of both genders in the home front. Work life balance theories have changed with times and new thinking has emerged which talks about work life balance as ever changing (Sometimes daily), no one size fits all and more importantly that work life balance does not mean equal balance.

The new thinking in the area of work life balance has forced organizations to re-look at their work life balance practices as many had one size fits all approach. New practices in the area of work life balance today veer towards offering a rich array of options for employees to choose, which include, job-share, telecommuting, part-time working etc. Increasingly organizations are looking at work life balance as an requirement of not just married women and men with children but also single and childless employees with extended responsibilities elder care. Importantly organizations have recognized that male employees also might need work life balance.

The starting point of getting work life balance practices right would be to figure out what employees need whey they ask for work life balance. What an unmarried employee might want would be very different from another unmarried employee and so would be the case of a women employee who married with kids and what her friend who is in the same boat.

Of importance is also to understand if the organization culture, management philosophy agrees and supports work life balance practices. It’s critical that managers and supervisors understand the need for work life balance as other wise employees who opt for work life balance benefit might end up feeling that they are an odd person out and organization looks at them as someone who is taking it easy.

The best of work life balance practices have failed due to lack of supporting culture and enablers like supervisor sensitivity and prejudice. Communication and context setting would be the key to ride over such issues.

Do women prefer male bosses?

Yes, according to a survey by Harper’s Bazaar leading women’s magazine in the UK which claims to be a favorite among smart and sophisticated women who are affluent, well traveled and cultured. While the full details of the intention of the survey and its complete findings are not available, some information was posted on www.womenpaycheck.com.

The survey by the magazine claims that 60% of women prefer to work for a male boss and 70% would be happy to see their women colleagues fail.

Some other findings of the survey:
58 percent said there was indeed gender equality in their workplace.

70 percent of respondents admitted they would be happy to see a colleague fail.

20 percent confessed to taking credit for another's work.

85 per cent of the women admitted they had locked themselves in the office toilet to cry.

About 33 per cent said they pretended to be less intelligent than they actually were to flatter a male ego and get ahead.

70 per cent of women thought that socializing outside office hours brought them more influence at work.

40 per cent said men had not invited them to traditional male bonding activities such as a round of golf or a game of poker.

70 per cent said that simply by wearing a pair of high heels to work they automatically felt more powerful and confident in their ability to deal with the working day.

I personally am not surprised at the findings in the survey especially about taking credit for another’s work, socializing outside work, and wearing high heels to work to feel more powerful. We have all done this once in a while and especially the high heels bit though I must confess I have done that to look taller 

The surprising bit was on preferring male bosses as one would think competence rather then gender as a criteria for preferring bosses. Do the survey findings indicate that may be the women who prefer male bosses in the survey had the bad luck of dealing with bad women bosses and may be this is the reason for their preference?

Would the survey findings be the same if they were conducted on women in India and at junior and middle levels across various industries in India? Are women the same everywhere? Or would you say Indian women are different?

The answers probably are going to be as diverse as women are but let me know what you think……..

How is India doing in the “Great Place to Work” ® in comparison with ROW?

Economic times (Wednesday 9th January) featured an article about the great places to work survey. The article made for an interesting read as it compared the best of the work places in India with those in Latin America, UK, US and, Europe. While we are catching up with the rest of the world thanks to the need to attract and retain talent, there is still a gap that exists especially in the area of work life balance, perception about transparency in management and about favoritism at work place.

On the positive side India compares with the best in the area of diversity with a large percentage of employees agreeing that they were treated fairly regardless of their sex, ethnicity and religion. One of the interesting and surprising positive is the employee perception about being paid fairly about the work they do in comparison to employees in UK, Latin America, and EU.

Also seeing a positive upward trend is the employee perception about “getting justice when I appeal” and now compares with not only Brazil and Uk, but also with the 100 Best Employers in US.

The “Great place to Work” ® survey is in its fifth year in India and this year besides the overall rankings there will be sub categories to recognize the best among large firms, best work place for moms, Gen Y, for work life balance and for building leaders.