5 Ciri Gen-Y dengan Adversity Quotient (AQ) Tinggi

Telah dibuktikan bahwa ada 3 hal yang menjadi prediktor global untuk kesuksesan seseorang, yaitu IQ (inteligensia), EQ (keterampilan emosional), dan AQ (resiliensi terhadap tantangan).

Adversity Quotient (AQ) adalah penilaian ilmiah yang mengukur resiliensi seseorang, daya tahan seseorang saat menghadapi tekanan atau kesulitan. Seseorang dengan AQ yang tinggi memiliki kemampuan, keterampilan dan mindset yang positif untuk menghadapi bahkan keluar dari situasi tersebut. Lebih jauh dari itu, dia menyambut tantangan dengan sikap yang positif. Sebaliknya, seseorang dengan AQ yang rendah cenderung memiliki kesulitan dan putus asa dalam mengatasi masalah, dan menjauhi tantangan.

Gen Y (Millenial) pun sama, ada yang memiliki AQ tinggi, dan ada yang lebih rendah. Tantangan kita sebagai Leaders adalah untuk memastikan SDM Gen-Y kita mempunyai resiliensi yang tinggi atau bisa meningkat, agar boosting performa bisnis.

 

Berikut adalah 5 ciri Millenial dengan AQ yang tinggi dalam Pekerjaan:

1. Mindset positif. Merespon sesuatu dengan perspektif yang positif, antusias dan optimistis, bukan negatif. Milenial ini cenderung proaktif, tidak reaktif terhadap situasi atau masalah.
2. Berani keluar dari zona nyaman. Orang ini bertipe suka menjemput tantangan. Merespon situasi yang tidak nyaman dengan tenang dan cara pandang yang positif. Tidak suka dengan status quo, sehingga selalu ingin berkembang, ingin mencapai hasil yang lebih baik. Faktor motivasi diri dan disipilin diri tinggi, sehingga membutuhkan faktor eksternal yang relatif rendah.
3. Tidak takut hadapi perubahan. Perubahan adalah hal yang wajar. Milenial dengan AQ tinggi akan agile dalam mengatasi situasi yang tidak menentu, akan memimpin Tim-nya dengan efektif untuk melalui perubahan bersama-sama.
4. Kegagalan adalah kesempatan belajar. Milenial ber-AQ tinggi menganggap kegagalan bukan akhir dari segalanya, malah merupakan kesempatan untuk belajar dan mengembangkan diri. Individu ini tidak mudah menyerah saat dalam masalah, atau menghadapi penolakan. Hasil adalah penting, namun proses juga memiliki peran yang sama pentingnya.
5. Bukan complainer atau blamer. Milenial yang memiliki AQ tinggi memiliki  akuntabilitas dan rasa tanggung jawab terhadap pekerjaan, tidak suka mengeluh atau menyalahkan orang lain saat dalam menghadapi tekanan atau masalah.

Semoga artikel ini dapat membantu mengidentifikasi dan memicu resiliensi tim Millenial Anda.

Hubungi Outward Bound Indonesia (email: info@outwardboundindo.org atau ph: 021-548-1529) untuk dapat info lebih lanjut tentang AQ dan program Training untuk mengembangkannya.

My next Talk, What’s next for HR in 2016

Upcoming event for fellow HR practitioners. What’s next for HR in 2016?
I’ll be talking about AQ (Adversity Quotient), and why it is essential to improve it for the future Gen Y leaders.
The event is on Thursday, 3 Mar 2016 in Jakarta.

WHY NOT “WHY NOT!” ?

I was asked this question a couple of days ago,” What do you think about traveling to Georgia next month for a week?”. My immediate reaction was “Why? Why a week? Why Georgia? Seems so short for some place so far away? Seems..crazy.” I justified declining the idea with my busy schedule. I admit, as a travel adorer myself, the invitation was very tempting!

A day later, I attended an event where I heard a guy’s response to what could, for many, seem like an outlandish idea to be “why not!”
We are programmed to intelligently turn down ideas, say no to proposals, reject invitations by asking “why?”. Why this and why that were originally designed for finding reasons as to why something is, but more often than not are actually used as a logical excuse to why something shouldn’t be.

In the movie “Yes Man” out some years ago, Jim Carrey plays a guy that challenges himself to say ‘yes’ to everything for an entire year as a therapy. I’m not advocating that we should throw all our senses out the window and go with our impulses all the time. But then again, maybe that’s exactly the problem! We are shaped by society to use our rationale for all decision-making processes, which in effect our impulses became dull and tend to reject new ideas just because they’re foreign to us, which results in the denial of a myriad of possibilities.

Let’s pause and try something here. If we reversed the above formula and said, if I wanted to experience new things, then I’d have to try new ideas that are foreign to me, and therefore I’d have to give my brain a break and go the opposite of what it would say. Voila, the inverted formula works!

As I’m writing this, I researched the word impulsive, and I was surprised to see a source framing it to be of something negative. “Impulsive actions are typically poorly conceived and often results in undesirable consequences. When such actions have positive outcomes, they tend not to be seen as signs of impulsivity, but as indicators of boldness, quickness, spontaneity, courageousness, or unconventionality”

So I suppose it could just be a matter of words. For all intents and purposes, let’s not call it impulsiveness, but rather courageousness. What if, by saying “why not!” we are in fact practicing courage, honing on our spontaneity, sharpening our quickness. That doesn’t sound bad at all, does it? My challenge now to you is to courageously exclaim ‘yes!’ to a fresh bold idea without a second thought.

As for me, I may not end up going to Georgia next month, but I’m up for other crazy proposals!

This article was published by NOW!Jakarta magazine October 2014 issue. Please click here to see the online version of the magazine. 

What to look for in a Team building program

There’s no denying that Teamwork is essential for any group or organization. The benefits of a cohesive team is invaluable for any organization. A 20th century inventor, industrialist and successful businessman, Henry Ford said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Nowadays, team development and leadership trainings have become a popular program for the training department. A team spirit is deemed as one of the most important values and required traits for people to have. It’s no wonder HR managers will seek expert help in order to acquire it.

My past article “Is your Team building training worth the investment?” raises the point of how team development programs may have been trivialized and confused with fun company events – when in actuality they are 2 parallel but different things.

I want to address how you can make the most out of your team building program, and also lend you a couple of tips on what to look for in a good program to make your training investment worth while.

Experience is our best Teacher

While there are plenty of learning methods out there, there’s nothing that teaches us better than our own experience. An education method that uses the students’ own experience and pushes them to grow outside of their comfort zone is called Experiential Learning. I believe experience to be one of the most effective ways through which human beings learn. When something (good or bad) happens to you, you’ll remember the experience and understand the learning much better than if you didn’t experience it yourself. Imagine learning to ride a bike for the first time. Scene A. Imagine doing it by just reading a manual. Scene B. Imagine doing it by actually trying to ride the bike. Which scene do you think will work more effectively? You’re right, Scene B.

In the same light, in a team building program that uses Experiential learning method, your team is directly engaged in a relationship building experience by exercising communication, coordination, leadership, followership. Essentially, instead of just learning about building teamwork from some theory, you are actually learning through it from practice.

While a team building program should be engaging and active,  make sure your teams go home with CHANGES:

1. Change in Paradigm

When a person decides to shift his way of thinking, a change in paradigm is taking place. A good team building program should be able to facilitate awareness of a person in the context of community. It acts like a mirror for the team and team members to see how they are, how they work and interact together. They should be able to reflect on the weak and strong points and where they can develop more. In essence, a good team building program is able to empower self-development and self-transformation of each team member from bad to good, from good to better, from better to great. The first step of transformation is for someone to say “I can change”.

2. Change in Behavior

A development program is a link between the “past and future”. People should take away from a training a sense of empowerment and a set of tools to act on it. It’s not enough to know about your weakness if you won’t do anything to improve it, vice versa it’s not enough to know about your strong points if you won’t put them in good use. Awareness that is followed by commitment and action can move mountains, so to speak. In the same light, a good team building program should be able to generate commitment and action of each individual team member as well as the team as a whole. The next step of transformation is for someone to say “I will change”.

Are you in control of your emotional control?

How tragically interesting! As I was writing 5 paragraphs into this blog to primarily talk about self-control, the electricity decided to shut and long story short I lost all my article, leaving only one line I’d originally written on my first draft to mock me. Yes, all I wanted to do was scream, yell and beat myself out (or somebody else). But I didn’t! I suppose it wouldn’t have been wise on my part to react negatively anyway, because if I had, I would have lost my integrity and the entire blog would have been compromised. So please bear with me as I’m now regaining my cool while at the same time clicking the “save draft” button to prevent further loss and a potential major meltdown on my part. 🙂

My original 5 paragraph blog

50 minutes later.. this is what I ended up with

This is how my article would have looked like .. more or less.

In the spirit of Easter, I thought I’d share my lenten experience this past 40 days. This year I decided that I wouldn’t do things I’d typically go for like giving up meat on Friday. For this year, I wanted to do something different, more challenging and pertinent to my personal growth. I decided that I would be brave and confront my vice! I wanted to abstain from negative emotions, I wanted to curb anger and other manifestations alike. You see, I can be quite short fused and impatient as a person. It’s not something I’m proud of at all (for obvious reasons), and I’ve been trying to improve that area for a long time. So when lent began, I thought what better time to do it than now.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen!

So this is what I did. I committed that for every negative emotion I carried out, I would donate Rp. 10,000 (equivalent to USD 1) for a good cause. So all in all I figured it was a positive thing. If I succeeded, I was curbing my bad habits. If I failed, I was doing something good for other people. I accumulated Rp.320.000 at the end. So is it good or bad, one might ask? Since there’s no calibrated device to gauge these things, I suppose it’s hard to make a call whether I did well or not. But to me, it’s my personal best so far and I’m very proud of myself that I managed to refrain from festering some negative feelings during the process. Trust me, I could’ve lost more than Rp. 320.000 had it not for the wager.

To me it’s not about the wager, be it big or small. The most valuable lesson I learned from this experience is that emotions are an active will, a verb and it’s something we have full control of. Stephen Covey’s first of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Be proactive” in which he talks about the importance of taking initiative in life by realizing that your decisions are the primary determining factor for life effectiveness. In other words, we decide whether we want to feel good or bad.

Some people are built with a more positive predisposition, some with less. Those who have got a better predisposition have a head start over others. But it doesn’t mean that the quick tempered, short fused, impatient folks are hopeless and have to stay that way forever. It just means that we have to work harder to get better.

Switch it like an On/Off Button

I later discovered this fantastic hypothesis during the process which is, that we all have a possession to an on/off emotional switch. All our feelings and emotions are the currents that run through our body, all human beings have them, it’s normal. Whether we want to turn the switch on or off is our call. What the switch does is manifest the emotions we feel inside into a concrete action. Something can trigger us to feel angry, but we decide whether we want to turn the angry switch on or not. Something can trigger us to feel frustrated, but we decide whether we want to carry on and get frustrated or not. Vice versa, something can trigger us to feel happy, but we decide whether we want to get happy or not.This is why people react differently to different stimuli.

My emotional on/off switch

Honestly it was no walk in the park to try to stick to my “don’t get angry” commitment for 40 days, but I tell you it was well worth it. It wasn’t magic, there was no short cut unfortunately, in fact it took a lot of hard work in conditioning the mind. But I managed to do it. And if I could do it, I know you can too. Here are some tips that worked for me in my journey of emotional control, see if they can work for you too:

1. A Goal

Goal setting is paramount. All process for personal development begins with the end in mind. Whether you want to smile more, frown less, laugh more, yell at people less, whatever it is, write it down as a goal. My goal was to be more patient and less angered. I believed in the goal because I knew it would make me a more effective person and help me in my relationships with others. A goal will help you stay the course when the going gets tough and there are more temptations to do bad than there are motivations to do good.

2. Reminders

I posted sticky notes everywhere that say “Rp.10.000 for every negative emotion”, on my vanity mirror, bathroom mirror, in my closet to remind me about my wager. Reminders are helpful because we can easily forget about them. It’s unlikely that these goals would top someone’s bucket list. This may not change other people’s lives, but it can change our own lives. Have a daily reminder of your personal development goals.

3. Talk to yourself like a friend would

When I discovered that I’d lost my 5-paragraph blog, I literally repeated to myself “It’s okay. Don’t get angry. Don’t get frustrated. Just write it again, Wendy”. I pretended that somebody else was talking to me and it helped me cool off. I know for certain that if I dwelled on being negative, my brain would shut down and I wouldn’t be able to continue writing again. When we’re feeling emotional, we’re not ourselves. Haven’t you done or said things when you were angry that you later regretted? Emotions can easily trump rationale if we don’t control it. Next time when you’re upset about something, try stepping outside of your emotions and be a logical friend to yourself.

4. See the big picture

When we feel angry, our rationale is clouded by negative feelings and causes us to think short term. Condition your mind to see the big picture of things as they unravel. To me, this especially works in an argument. It helps to ask ourselves, “What are we trying to accomplish from this? To win the argument just for the sake of winning, or actually find a solution or common ground with that person?”

I couldn’t believe how effective my 40-day lenten commitment had turned out. Most of all as a final test, I’m so proud of myself that a little thing such as losing a 5-paragraph file didn’t affect my mood. In the end I think it paid off because I believe that I was able to produce something even better than I would have originally. *smiles* I know that I will continue this long and trying journey of emotional control. I hope you will stay tuned as I will keep you posted on my process!

To end my article, I’d like to leave you with a quote I recently read “Be selective in your battles, sometimes peace is better than being right.”

You Don’t Have to Change the World, just Yourself

I met up with an old friend for coffee recently and she had just moved to a new job as a general manager of sales for a medium-sized company. She spent a whole hour telling me all the things she found wrong with her job, namely the company, the system, her boss, her staff, her colleagues, her office, everything. The next time I saw her just a few days later, she was still complaining about the same things. She obviously disliked everything about her job and was whining how she couldn’t perform her job under those circumstances. I had to stop her before she went for another round of complaints and  gave her an unsolicited advise by saying “I see that you have 2 options. Either you make drastic changes in the company that will suit to your liking, or try to look at it from a different point of view and work with them”. My advice seemed to give her a wake-up call, as the next day she texted me to say that she felt more at ease at work because she looked at things with a new perspective.

A greater power than changing someone else’ perspective is changing our own.
Perspective is our ability to see, hear, smell, feel, experience something a certain way because of the way we perceive it. If we ask an Eskimo and someone who lives in the Sahara dessert about their definition of cold, they each will certainly give a different answer. So often we’re caught up in our own ways and try to change everything around us to fit into our ideals, and we forget to check in with ourselves to see if we’ve made the necessary adjustments. Dr Maya Angelou said “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” So instead of looking at a problem and saying “How can others change?”, it’s worth looking inward first and ask “How can I change?”

Perspective is a funny thing, it can make something look good, and with a slight shift, it can make the same thing look the complete opposite. The picture on the left illustrates what perspective is, in which we can see two different images just by shifting our point of view. One image we can see is a young lady looking away and the other is an old lady looking down. We all hold the power to make the changes we want to see.

A story about a King and the leather carpet
Once upon a time there was a king who ruled a prosperous country. One day he went for a trip to some distant areas of his country. When he was back to the palace he complained that his feet were very painful because it was the first time he went for such a long trip, and the road he went through was rough and stony. He then ordered his people to cover every road in the entire country with leather carpets.
Definitely this would need thousands of cows’ skin and it would cost a huge amount of money. Then one of his wise servants dared himself to tell the king “Why do you have to spend that unnecessary amount of money? Why don’t you just cut a little piece of leather to cover your feet?” The king was surprised but he later agreed to his suggestion to make a “shoe” for himself.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy

This article has been published on Outward Bound Indonesia’s blog

HELLO?? ARE YOU LISTENING??

I recently gave a communication workshop that I called “Hello?? Are you Listening??” to a wonderful group of professional women. The premise of this topic was to raise awareness of the importance of listening as an equal counterpart of speaking, to understand why listening is not as easy as we like to think, and to get the practical ways of how we can enhance our listening skills and therefore improve the quality of our communication. The workshop went tremendously well, with all the ladies actively participating and attentively listening! *big smiles on my face

Photo credit: technorati.com

How can I be more interesting to people?

I completed my day at one of the chambers’ networking evening event. You always meet different, unique and interesting people at these events. Personally, I like to ask questions to and about the person I’m talking to, especially when I’m just meeting them for the first time, with the intention to explore about them – and make conversations. Dale Carnegie, an international communication guru said in his book “How to win friends and influence people” that in order to be interesting, you must first be interested! He also said that the rule of thumb of a good conversationalist is to be a good listener.

Here’s a fact, most of us think that the only person we think is interesting is ourselves!

As the story goes, I met a gentleman at the event who was very interesting. He had a story for everything,…and apparently the stories never stopped coming. What I came to realize was that he was a talker, as he started monopolizing the conversations. At one point of the conversation, I made an attempt to reply to his comment by telling a short story. And sure enough, he interrupted me halfway by starting a new topic altogether. I was actually quite dumbfounded by this notion. I found it ironical and comical at the same time, knowing the fact that I’d just given a workshop about listening earlier that day.

Okay, are you listening now??

The incident I had with that gentleman just re-confirmed my belief that listening is NOT easy and that it’s a skill everyone can learn and practice. You know when you’re having a good conversation with someone when there’s an equal amount of interaction, equal amount of asking and equal amount of answering or story telling. Conversations are like a game of tennis, it’s fun when two players are hitting the ball back and forth to each other. Good communication or conversations are also based on respect. When you respect someone, you’re able to listen to them better. But don’t forget, the opposite also holds true, respecting someone means giving them a chance to be heard. When you’re sharing a story to a friend, and she gives you an undivided attention, doesn’t it make you feel really good about yourself? Like you’re the most interesting person on earth?

I hope some of you can benefit from my (unfortunate) encounter. But we can change things around in our daily communications and make a conscious effort to listen better. Next time you want to interrupt someone in the middle of their sentence, stop and listen more – there might be something very interesting you wouldn’t discover otherwise.

This article has been published on Outward Bound Indonesia’s blog

Ensuring a Balanced Development for Our Adolescents

Parents and educators alike continuously search for ways to give the best education there is for their kids. It’s becoming more and more urgent for schools to provide not only the standard academic curriculum, extracurricular activities, but also specific programs for character development that are intermittent in the curriculum. You’ll find wide ranging extracurricular activities, from performing arts to sports. Youth leadership programs are also provided for those involved in the student council and other organizations or clubs. There are many non-academic activities available for our adolescence, why are they important?

photo credit: almightydad.com

Adolescence Being Engaged and Active Outside of Classroom

There are many reasons behind the provision of extracurricular activities for teenagers. Occupying students with activities outside of classroom has been proven to give positive impact for them. Aside from providing purposeful time and helping teenagers steer away from negative influence due to idle time, non-academic programs help them explore multi-faceted talents they might not experience in class otherwise. The skills they learn from these activities are invaluable for their lives ahead, may it be the technical skill of playing the piano or playing soccer, or the soft skill of interest in arts and spirit of sportsmanship.

Facts about Physical, Mental and Spiritual Balance

Plenty of research have shown that teenagers need to learn not only from inside of classroom, but also from outside of classroom. Being involved in sports, theaters, scouts, musical, dance will positively affect a teenager’s physical, mental and spiritual health. Outdoor activities have been scientifically proven to boost a teen’s self confidence and self esteem. A team sport is a wonderful avenue for teenagers to learn about competitiveness, teamwork and sportsmanship. The more obvious fact is that active kids can improve their health significantly, and can reduce risks of obesity, heart problems and diabetes in the long term.

Why Learn in the Outdoors?

When a teenager goes on an outdoor program like Outward Bound, not only will they encounter physical challenge but essentially they will learn about life skills. Through physical strive, they will discover their strengths and potentials, they will learn about perseverance and to condition their minds in order to beat their own mental inhibitions. They will find new outlook and self-esteem about themselves.

Through team challenges, teenagers will learn to work together and build relationships with others, strive for a common goal versus personal ego, and also importantly, they will learn about compassion for others. Being sensitive to the needs of others is not an innate trait that everyone is born with or automatically has – it’s a learned skill that can be practiced. In an outdoor program like Outward Bound, teenagers will learn the skills and insights of personal growth as well as inter-personal relationships.

It’s essential that our teenagers be introduced with a wide variety of activities and interests; to keep them active, to keep them healthy, well-versed, for them to have different interests in life, to expand their potential, to develop their character, attitude and inter-personal skills and lastly to equip them with life skills they will someday use in the future. So for parents and educators alike, keep our adolescents active and help them develop and grow holistically.

This article has been published on Outward Bound Indonesia’s blog http://outwardboundindo.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/ensuring-a-balanced-development-for-our-adolescents/

Conflict as a Relationship Building Agent

When we hear the word conflict, we automatically get worried or scared like it’s some kind of a disease. Yes, so it does have a bad association, but it may not be as bad as it sounds. One of the definitions of conflict according  to Webster’s dictionary is opposing action of incompatibles, antagonistic state or action (as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons). Many researchers say that conflict can have a healthy effect on relationships, on a personal level or professional level. In fact, in some group development models, conflict is a required ingredient in order for a team to reach optimum productivity.  Some people believe that it’s good to have arguments during courtship to see how compatible you really are with your partner. But the most important part of a conflict is how we resolve it when it happens.

Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there!

I was advising a company in their relationship building strategy when one of the executives said to me “Ya, this is all good, but our staff never have conflict. We’re all fine”. Many people misconstrue conflict with problems. Just because two people never have an argument, doesn’t mean they don’t have a problem – it might just mean they’re not addressing it.

Conflict comes from all sorts of reasons, differences in value, background, upbringing, personality type to differences in habits, preferences, ego, jealousy. Conflicts are part of life, they’re part of a (healthy) human relationship. Haven’t a married couple had a disagreement about either to squeeze their toothpaste from the bottom or the top? Haven’t we all had a disagreement with our best friend about what movie to watch? At work, haven’t we had disagreements with our colleagues about strategies of completing  a project successfully?

Why can conflict be good in strengthening relationships and improving productivity?

When we have a disagreement with someone, it means we have a different opinion, desire or perception, we see the same thing with a different eye. At work, different reasons can trigger conflicts; miscommunications, misunderstandings, lack of role definition, leadership problems, company culture, personality clash. Our attitude towards conflict resolution is what will determine if the relationship will be strengthened, and if we will reach optimum productivity. Some people take the avoidance route in dealing with conflict, while others face the problem and address it. Just be mindful that conflicts continue to fester when ignored, they don’t go away just because we don’t deal with them.

I took an Outward Bound course in high school. During one of our lake expeditions, my canoeing partner and I found ourselves in a stalemate. We were way behind our other teammates and lost our way. We were exhausted, hungry and extremely hot – and to make things worse, we couldn’t seem to row in a straight line or agree on which direction to go. We bickered until we got tired and stayed quiet in the striking heat. Finally we started communicating again and this time really tried to listen to each other’s views. We came to a decision and stuck with it. Before long, we were back on the road (water), found our way and caught up with our teammates.

Conflict Resolution Lesson #1: Problems don’t vaporize into thin air!

I learned a valuable lesson that day, that when we avoid each other and not address the issue, we literally stand still, and nothing gets achieved, and when you come back to it later, it’s still there. When you have an issue with someone from Accounting or Marketing or anyone in your team or company, you need to open communication and address it with them.

Conflict Resolution Lesson #2: We have 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason.

The other valuable lesson I learned that day was that conflict resolution is an opportunity to grow. When we try to resolve a problem, 2 things are required: speaking and listening. Doing both of them effectively will help in how the conflict will be resolved tremendously.

Speaker: State your views clearly, calmly and respectfully in a non-judgmental manner. Tell them how the problem makes you feel. Sometimes it’s good to acknowledge our emotions if we feel them, such as anger, frustration, disappointment, to get them out of our system. By so doing, it helps to clear the air and to not be holding grudge towards the person in the future. The power of conflict resolution is also humility. Admitting that we’re wrong and apologizing can go miles and miles in restoring and strengthening a relationship.

Listener: Listen, listen, listen! Some conflicts occur because a person just needs to be listened to. One of most important skills in conflict resolution is listening. Sounds easy (no pun intended!), but a lot harder to do. Good listening is really listening to what the person is saying, rather than to what we’re saying in our heads. Also, the other side of humility is forgiveness, and there’s great power in it.

In business, family or friendships, respect is first and foremost. Respect each other’s views, opinions, positions especially during a disagreement.

When we try to resolve an issue with someone, we are opening ourselves to new perspectives (theirs). By listening to their views and accepting them and/or compromising ours, we’re expanding our horizons. We don’t have to agree with their views, but we can agree to disagree. When we try to resolve a conflict, we’re developing our communication repertoire with that person – and essentially building relationships with them.

This article has been published on Outward Bound Indonesia’s blog: http://outwardboundindo.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/conflict-as-a-relationship-building-agent/

Generation-Y Thriving with Your Business Growth

Last week, I wrote about Indonesia’s consistent economic growth and the affects it has on many businesses (Growth of Economy, Your Business and Human Capital Challenge). One needs to be vigilant that albeit business growth is required, but so is the quality of its people. I spoke to the CEO of a major real estate developer company recently, he told me that his human capital size have grown 200% in the past 2 years. Their problem is the development aspect of the people is not going linear as the size. His other concern was the new young hires have difficulties catching up to match the standards.

Is academic excellence enough when hiring fresh graduates?

In order to anticipate a rapid growth in business, many large companies set up a fast track program for young, bright and talented individuals, typically fresh university graduates, in order to groom them to become managers in a relatively short time of a year or two (known as Management Trainee programs). Some challenges these companies face with the new recruits, other than their lack of knowledge about (the) business is their mentality. Their young age, lack of life experience and skills require a lot of growing and maturing on their part. So think about the role you play, the money and time you need to put in to mature them.

Facts of Gen-Y Life

Studies have shown that Gen-Y-ers (those who were born in the late 1980s up to mid 90s) excel in academics and knowledge of technology. They were practically born with a cellphone in their hands. Communication was made super easy by gadgets. Thinking processes have also been made more practical, short cut and almost automated, thanks to these devices. Yes, kudos to these technological evolutions, our lives are faster and easier – exactly like our 2-minute instant cup noodles. All this is great of course, except for the downsides. Studies show that this generation lack in resilience when faced with adversity. I remember less than 10 years ago, we had to go to the library, and get books just to research and obtain information. Back then, more effort had to be put in to something so simple. Nowadays, information can be accessed from your fingertips. Fighting spirit may very well have a different meaning to this generation than the previous generations altogether. Getting around or getting things done may seem effortless for the gen-Y.

So the dilemma is this, when these gen-Y-ers just graduated from university and apply to your company, they may most likely carry this “fast and easy” mindset. A bright straight A student from a reputable university, applying for a managerial position, expecting a nice office, good pay, easy going boss, easy going colleagues, easy going work, in other words an easy going life. It doesn’t work that way, does it!

The Uphill Battle to Win the War: Developing the Gen-Y!

Many of our clients come to us due to this exact problem. People expect performance from putting in a mediocre effort, and when push comes to shove, they crack under pressure. The cardinal rule being in order to be ahead of competition, the people need to own a winning attitude and outstanding talent.

As I mentioned earlier, in a management trainee program, these “green” talents are prepped and groomed to be the next future leader. They have the skills and knowledge, but what about their mental attitude – or lack thereof? Don’t be disheartened, mental attitude can be detected and measured and it surely can be improved.

5 key ingredients when you’re developing the Gen Y’s winning attitude:

1. Coachability In the selection and recruitment stage, it’s imperative to select those who are not only talented and bright, but coachable. Coachability is an vital attribute to have for someone who’s inexperienced and expected to climb the corporate ladder in a short time. Humility, willingness and passion to learn is key to progress.
2. Fighting spirit & Resilience Test and observe how they perform under pressure. Their fighting spirit will get your company to new heights; their ability to beat the odds and be resilient during crisis. Never stop challenging your people.
3. Shine under pressure Empower your people to discover and use their potential. When you push your people to their limits, there’s only 2 possible outcomes, they will either break or shine. The shiners are keepers. Never cease to demand excellence from your people, that’s the only way they will grow.
4. Personal management Develop their maturity, personal values, emotional control and self-discipline. Their level of maturity and emotional control will help ease their transition to leadership position.
5. Leadership & Relationship Building The two attributes must go hand in hand because effective leadership happens when relationships are built. Successful leaders are those who can be role models and able to communicate well with others.

When you’re hiring and developing the gen-Y-ers, there’s going to be pluses and minuses. Highlight their strong points, and help them improve on the weak points. Remember that people are resilient, if you hire the right people, they will able to adapt to and embrace the changes you want them to conform into.