The Window seat

 

Recently I travelled to Himachal for an event that we do annually for our customers, but this post is not about the event but about the journey and as the title suggests it is about the Window seat.

While booking the ticket I went through the options trying to understand how much extra the airline wants me shell out for the window seat, though I have always allowed auto assignment to do this for me and I have been lucky but still I was not willing to take this chance as this route provides some great views of the snowcapped mountains, unfortunately there were no seats available to purchase so I decided I will try some different tactics this time as I ended up getting the isle seat and sometime people are willing to exchange isle with the window seat.

We boarded the flight and to my happiness a senior citizen came up to my seat and asked me to move over as he was assigned that window seat, I politely asked him sir getting in/out will be a problem in case you wanted to use the restroom and I am willing to give you my isle seat in case you wanted to? No thank you! he replied.

We settled down with the announcement “all ground staff to deplane” and to my surprise my fellow passenger who sat on the window seat had already shut the window shades and was dreaming (half asleep), airhostess walked over and reminded him to open the shades which he did for a few minutes and with the announcement “cabin crew to your stations for take-off” he went ahead to shut it again 😊 and sleep. 25 minutes into the flight refreshments were served and my neighbor didn’t even bother to open his eyes and woke up only after the announcement “Cabin crew to your stations for landing”.

To my surprise he said it was a long flight and I was like ‘Yes, and you made the most of it by sleeping’. Out of curiosity I asked him sir if you were to sleep the whole journey why did you take that seat as I wanted to sit there, he told me a few reasons why he did that, and they are as below.

-          He didn’t like people disturbing him while going out and coming in from the washrooms.

-          He absolutely didn’t like the food trolley brushing his elbows while moving through the isle.

Upon concluding this he asked me what was my objective behind getting that seat? I said sir, the reasons are very small, but I want to you consider next time if someone makes the same request again.

-          VIP access to the cloud – you are closer to the God and for a sales guy reaching the far end of the sales quarter this gives an amazing chance to appeal God closely for a breakthrough quarter.

-          Pardon me – Since you are away from the cabin attendant standing in the isle every time you respond to them you can start with PARDON ME gives a kind of cool feeling and makes you appear more sophisticated 😊

-          Instagram ka pressure – clear goal of beating my colleagues who have million posts from the window seat.

-          The deplane race – once we land, wait for the whole plane to deplane rather than standup as soon as the plane comes to a halt.

Once I was done and under an impression that he has heard me well I asked him Sir what is your stand on this? He said, “apologies but the battery of my hearing aid ran out as soon as you said the first sentence” and since then he has no idea of what I said apart from seeing my lips move. He assured me that he will catch up with me and discuss this further so that he does not take away someone’s pleasure ride into the clouds.  

Work Life Balance

 

Work Life Balance

#WorkLifeBalance is the most abused word right now in the corporate world, something that every organization preaches but is practiced by a very few. If I simply look back at our schedules and how our day goes away I seriously feel there is nothing like work life balance no matter how much we try and search it. A survey states that 76% of female and 56.4% of male working population feels that they are stressed due to work culture.

Let us understand what it brings along for each one of us in the industry and how it is very important for building and sustaining a great work environment. 

The corporate culture nowadays forces you to believe that your work is the most important aspect of your life, and it takes precedence over everything as you can work hard at the early stages of your career and then you can live happily for the rest of your life and from this flock of hardworking employees we see two sets of people

•        Those who decide to stay a corporate employee all their life and succeed because of the good work they have put in.
•         Those who become and entrepreneur and these folks have a different perspective altogether.

The first one has seen and achieved everything with hard work (keeping aside the politics) and expects everyone to be as hard working as he is/was and he will ensure that he keeps reminding everyone about how he used to work hard and how it has helped him reach where he is right now. The eco system around him (his Boss/ HR etc.) will be so closely sold around his belief that automatically anyone not living up to the standards set by him will be seen as an underperformer.

The second type the Entrepreneur can be more dangerous, they work on the belief that they have succeeded basis their merit and everyone around them must follow the same principles in life to be successful and to make it all worse they are the Eco-System.

Let’s have a look at what these types of people bring to their immediate employees.

-          Both the type of folks bring unwanted stress to their employees and employees are always under stress to perform.

-          Employees are more often seen hesitant in asking time or saying no to the projects with stringent timelines.

-          Employees often sacrifice extra hours just to meet timelines and are often seen cutting their family time.

-          This leads to stress and frustration that at times shows in their behavior or in long term becomes a part of their nature and seen as ill temperedness.

Let us see how we as leaders can work around our eco system to improve.

-          Allow employees to be more comfortable in form of giving feedback.

-          Allow a mechanism where we track employee’s mental health and ensure regular time offs!

-          Let’s move away from standard operating procedures and allow employees to be creative.

-          Let’s take a conscious call of not calling for work related stuff after 6:30pm

-          Let’s have ways of passing on the rewards of the hard work an employee puts to the family.

Some small steps like this may not bring a lot of change but will surely help improve the overall wellbeing and help improve Work Life Balance.