4

THE TRIBUNE Jobs&Careers

| Worklife

CAREERCATURE
SANDEEP JOSHI

CHANDIGARH | WEDNESDAY | 11 FEBRUARY 2015

Build rapport through empathy

This is not extra work burden. This is to give you a physical workout
in office as per companys new health policy.

CAREER SWEETENER
START-UP STORY

Taxiing to success

In a world where success is measured generally by

the monetary returns, the story of Aprameya Radhakrishna is a huge inspiration for all the young
wannbe entrepreneurs. Aprameya co-founded TaxiForSure along with Raghunandan G in June 2011
from a small roof-top bungalow in Bangalore with
virtually no capital investment and his venture has
recently been valued at over ~1500 crore.
In four years TaxiForSure is present in 40 cities and
has changed the way taxis are hired in India, It has
serviced more than 7,00,000 customers across India.
Aprameya hails from a typical south Indian middleclass family, where his life revolved around parents,
families and education. He completed him MBA
from IIM Ahmedabad. He shares his career sweetener recipe with us thus:

Dont sleep on an idea

If you have an idea, act on it fast. Think it through,
work with friends to develop and fine-tune it, and the
rest will follow. Invest in people help them grow
as professionals and individuals and they will be
your biggest equity. During an entrepreneurial journey, you shouldnt be afraid of making a wrong
choice or taking a risk. Once you have taken a decision, dont regret it, but learn from it and grow. Trust
your instincts, if you dont no one else will.

Family support
The key to success for an entrepreneur is family support. So take help from all possible quarters, he says.
Aprameyas sister picked customer calls and
assigned drivers in the middle of the night and his
parents gave an immense amount of moral support,
though all this happened after questioning him on
his idea of becoming a taxi driver after he graduated from IIM, Ahmedabad.

Choose your team wisely

All people are good, but its the right kind of people
that will give you the required edge. You have to
invest time while choosing the people and while they
are with you. You have to be their mentor, their boss
and their friend as time goes by. Aprameya says, As
our business grew, we realised the number of people
who were impacted by our idea. We saw the socio-economic changes our operators and drivers experienced. Naturally this was a humbling experience, but
it also strengthened my belief of not going very far
away from ground-reality.

Patience pays
One of the biggest building blocks in an entrepreneurial journey is patience. Aprameya advocates patience
and calmness even in the face of adversity. He says,
While dealing with an irritated customer, for
instance, if you intervene at the wrong time, it will
only result in a bad experience. I have learnt to keep
calm, smile if I can, and hear them out. This philosophy has also enabled me bridge the large gap between
our regulators and us as well. A calm mind will help
you to think right and take better decisions.

Celebrate success and have fun

It is necessary to have fun and create an environment where people can have fun. Aprameya says
From the two of us to a team of over 1500 people,
TaxiForSure today is a firm that attracts the best of
talent and the youngest of energiesand it is possible because we believed in allowing people to learn
from their mistakes, as we did, and grow with experience, all while having fun.
Career Tips from www.careersweetener.com.

From Jack Handeys quote

, Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile
in their shoes, to a Harvard
Business Review blog
declaring empathy as the
most important thing they
teach at Harvard Business
School, this once considered, soft and fuzzy people skill, has become the
game changer for organisations starting right from the
boardroom and enveloping
the bottom-most level.
In todays fast changing
and fiercely competitive
professional world, empathic and compassionate leaders gain an edge over the
conventional authoritative
CEOs by providing a strong
dependable and motivating
cover to their teams, who in
turn, are willing to push
harder to meet deadlines
and take risks because they
know they have a solid support system in the form of
empathic leaders.
Understanding the needs
of team members fosters an
open environment which
leads to strong trust building another important
quality required by organisations facing difficulty in
retaining employees that
is a powerful tool for
improving profits.
Yet, according to Harvard
Business Review, the desire
among many CEOs to
empathise with their teams
is hampered by the fear of
appearing weak and vulnerable. To quote the CEO of
an international bank, We
all know its important to
be empathic and see things
from the other persons

THINKSTOCK

GULNEET CHAHAL

SMART STRATEGY: TEAM BUILDING

perspective , but how do I

galvanize 48,000 persons in
my organisation, most of
whom think that empathy
is for wimps?, thus pointing to the fact that most
organisations still suffer
from an empathy deficit
and many leaders themselves do not have the requisite training or the tool kit
to incorporate compassion,
empathy and trust in their
teams.
Here are a few ways in
which empathy can be built
in teams:

MAP skills
It is a fact that most of the
leaders are unable to

empathise and form closeknit teams. The reason,

according to Management
Consultant,
Dr
Allan
Watkins,
is their poor
understanding of the communication process. When
a person says something,
most of us are actually not
listening, instead we are
getting ready to give a befitting reply, and this is especially true for managers and
CEOs, many of whom think
that their authority should
prevail
among
teams.
Thats one reason why
business meetings go on so
long with no concrete output, notes Watkins.
Team leaders need to get

well versed with the MAP

skill (Move, Appreciate,
Playback an acronym for
going through the listening
process so that they are able
to empathise).
As soon as you start to
communicate, where you
are the listner: consciously
Move your attention away
from your own thoughts,
drop your judgement about
the speaker (by pinching
yourself, or using a buzzer
as a reminder, or closing
your eyes) and take your
attention
towards
the
speakers tone of voice and
his body language. This will
make you more attentive
towards his perspective,

Attrition levels to go up
The attrition level across sectors is likely to go up to 20 per
cent in 2015, as a lot of jobs
will be available following
improving economic conditions, according to industry
experts. With market being
upbeat and lots of jobs being
available, there will an
increase in the overall attrition percentage. We expect
the attrition to be in the range
of 15-20 per cent across sectors, PeopleStrong HR Services Co-Founder and CEO
Pankaj Bansal told PTI.
Sectors like ITeS, software and IT would lead the
way primarily because of
high entry level attrition,
he added.
Echoing the view, executive
search firm GlobalHunts
Managing Director Sunil
Goel said international economic recovery and market
stability will attract large pool

of start-ups in the market and

the talent pools will move
from the existing industry
specific organisation.
The attrition that was
almost static at leadership
level will see some movement and also increase at
mid and lateral level. Attrition will grow to 15-20 per
cent and especially in sectors
like IT, ITeS it can go up to 2025 per cent, he added.
However, industries like
pharmaceuticals, FMCG, aviation, agriculture will have
lesser attrition, he said.
TeamLease
Services
Senior General Manager,
EMPI, Hussain Tinwala said
the buoyant business and
hiring sentiments seems to
have had a negative impact
on the retention levels.
This has led to a growth in
the attrition. The attrition
level for previous year was

around 5-6 per cent overall,

which will go up to 8 per cent
this year, he added.
Sectors like PSU sectors,
however, will continue to be
the lowest in attrition
because of their stronger
branding. Candidates from

private sector applying for

PSU jobs is higher at junior
and mid segment. Besides
sectors like automobile
OEMs, infrastructure, CRO
would also witness less attrition due to lack of industry
growth, he said.

without the pressure to listen every word.

Next you get into a state of
Appreciation for the speaker. This is crucial and essential for team leaders to drop
the
hardnosed,
unapproachable stance. The
moment leaders put away
their prejudices they can
immediately feel the depth
of the interaction. Needless
to say, the speaker feels
happy in being seen, heard
understood and accepted,
and that is very motivating.
Once you have understood the speaker, you need
to Playback ie repeat without dominating what you
felt the speaker meant. This
is the moment where the
leader through his insight
into the mind of his team
member, can establish profound influence.
Follow the 7-38- 55 communication rule. According
to a study by Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of
UCLA, the actual words
that we speak account for
only 7 per cent of the total
message
that
people
receive. While the tone of
voice has an impact of 38
per cent, and 55 per cent is
how
we
communicate
through our gestures and
body language. This principle must be put into practice by all leaders striving to
build functional teams.

Develop kinaesthetic
harmony
Performance
artist,
Natalia Duongs research
and talk at TedX, Stanford,
focussed on kinaesthetic
empathy as a resource for
building trust and conflict

resolution, among people

in different walks of life.
Its a profound team-building
exercise
through
shared body movement
among team members. It
involves performing an
action (hand gestures, or
feet and leg movement,
walking with the same
pace) together with another human being, taking
turns to lead and follow.
The success of building
empathy through this lies
in the premise that mirror
neurons inside our brains
get activated when we perform the same action as
another human being and
an emotional connection is
built, leading to greater initiative and responsibility
for understanding the other
person. The activity is further amplified with team
members moving and
describing their life journey
from beginning to the end,
being followed at the same
time by the other team
members. Its a very powerful demonstration of the
attention it takes to listen
and tune our physical bodies to the needs of our fellow team members.
Often the outcomes of this
activity are so profound
that it immediately relaxes
the team members and
leads to better bonding.
Building functional teams
through learning to connect
by empathising is currently
the most profound management mantra that needs to
be incorporated as a chief
core value by CEOs and
leaders of organisations.
The writer is a Dale Carneige Certified
Soft Skills Trainer

CUBICLE TRENDS

Poor work environment

a risk for heart health
A new study has demonstrated that employees
experience highly demanding requirements if they are
in a poor psychosocially
work environment and
therefore, they are likelier
to suffer from heart problems.
The study conducted at
University of Gothenburg
showed that employees
working in psychosocially
poor work environment
have little ability to control
their work or not feel sufficiently appreciated for the
contributions they make.
According to the study,
men who do not have heart
problems but who experience poor psychosocial
work conditions often have

warning signs for coronary

artery disease, such as high
blood pressure and high
cholesterol values. Mia
Soderberg can also draw
the conclusion that these
men more often change
jobs, and points out here a
difference between women
and men.
Mia
Soderberg,
lead
researcher said the labour
market is no longer dominated by industry, but work
instead deals more and
more
with
knowledge
processes and contact with
other people and in workrelated illness, we have also
seen a shift from a focus on
physical risk factors to a
greater need to examine
psychosocial factors. ANI

Court new horizons

MARITIME LAW

Moving beyond boundaries

Continued from p1

Shipping is perhaps the

most international of all
the world's greatest industries and one of the most
challenging.
Several
countries from the mid
19th century felt the need
for a permanent international body to promote
maritime activities. But
these hopes were not
realised till the establishment of the united nation
itself. Thereafter in 1948
an international conference in Geneva established IMO, which is
regarded as the parent
Organisation in the area.

Job profile
To work as a maritime
lawyer it is important to
have a full and thorough
understanding of the
minutiae and principles of
maritime law as laid down
and governed by the
International
Maritime

Organisation as well as
the "dry land" laws laid
down by individual states
or nations in which one
may practice. For the average maritime lawyer, an
average working week can
take in more differing cases than most people will
realise. The image conjured up by the two words
"maritime law" will be different for each person. For
some it may bring forth
the idea of the lawyer carrying out a check of paperwork pertaining to the
loading and unloading of a
container ship to guarantee that everything is
administrated correctly.
For others it will call to
mind the lawyer in the
courtroom fighting a case
of criminal negligence for a defendant or a plaintiff - to ensure that their
client gets the best result
they possibly can. The
truth is that a maritime

lawyer's job can take in all

of these aspects and
numerous others.

Where are the jobs?

Your graduate law degree,
specialising in law of the
sea coupled by senior-level
law practice would hold
you in good stead in delivering advisory assistance.
You will manage a portfolio
of projects individually
and as part of a multi-disciplinary team concerning
the negotiation and settlement of maritime boundaries, preparation and
defense of extended continental shelf claims, and
matters associated with
the management of ocean
space, including the foundations for the development of offshore oil, gas,
minerals and living maritime resources.
COMMERCIAL LAW FIRMS:
You will work with compa-

INSTITUTE WATCH

The School of Maritime

Law offering LL.M Maritime
at IMU Chennai campus.

nies in a wide variety of

industries, including energy, transportation, construction and technology in
assisting them with their
litigation, regulatory and
transactional needs.
PARALEGAL: You can also
dovetail your experience in
preparing all legal documents including but not
limited to correspondence,
briefs, pleadings, appeals,
contracts and etc. for attorney review and filing and
enter the paralegal field.
You would meet with
potential clients and gather case information and file
pleadings.
Therefore, if you are aiming for a Law degree, go offbeat by opting for these offshoots and watch your
career soar high.
The writer is a Punjab-based
career consultant