Does Spot Running make you run a Distance?

Once again yesterday I was confronted by an employee who inquired about his not getting growth despite his doing wonderful job since so many years. This confrontation again brought to me back the same old query – Does spot running make you run a distance?

Interestingly, since the day of my joining the corporate,I am hearing and is generally advised that it is the soft skills which are more responsible to succeed in career then functional & technical skills; still people do connive with and do not want to understand it. People however, in private discussions, accept and vouch for the behaviour’s importance in success.

I see two reasons of this immature behaviour of people - Education system & Culture in corporate - responsible for giving growth to employees based on their technical/functional skills.

At Education level, primarily focus is on imparting technical knowledge and to some extent in whatever way, providing opportunity to students that can make them acquire skill that is again technical in nature. Look at the course curriculum, its out & out very technical in nature. Soft development is missing entirely. Nowhere, the need is felt providing knowledge, irrespective of course one is pursuing, in soft subjects like psychology, basic neuroscience and anthropology. Mistake lies at the end of policy makers not to include such subjects in pure technical programs like engineering, medicine and technology. Yes, when I see some students of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, opting for psychology as a secondary subject, a find a sense of relief in me, but it doesn't give me full satisfaction as still such subjects are optional and  not compulsory to pursue. 

The corporate level, on one hand keep beating its chest of not having sufficient talent and on other, keep repeating the same mistake by promoting people based on their technical skills. That’s why, people with technical knowledge entering corporate remain focussed on their technical skills only.  The realisation that it is not only technical but more of behavioural skills required to be successful, it was already too late for them to correct the mistake. And then we face such questions from employees about their not getting growth. They think they can be successful by doing more of what they were doing before and telling others to do the same. But I find it running on a sport, dreaming to cover a distance.

It’s high time to introspect to correct our ways to make people more human and not robot. Perhaps, it will help people to get growth in their respective working domains and also in making a better society at large.

 Growth is a function of behaviour with technical knowledge to create the base for it.


Comments

  1. Unknown18 September 2015 at 08:24

    Employee who inquired about his not getting growth are the one who worked under the Company Bureaucratic management , and having no discussion around career development .
    Young employees are only trained to perform the work for what the are hired , they are not allowed to think out of the box which cause lacking in there behavioural skills

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rajesh Tripathi18 September 2015 at 21:31

    Shobhit, Thanks for your comments. I liked it. However, one should not forget that career is always a personal choice. Yes, there are good number of organisations who work around career development of their employees; but I would still suggest that every one should focus on their softer skills to gain growth, as growth rests on basic elements of softer part, which I tried to bring in my blog.

    ReplyDelete

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