Optimise Self Development Towards Achieveing Emotional Intelligent (EQ)

Please take note the Emotional Intelligent is not known as EI but EQ!. This because Emotional Intelligent is measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ).

As my reply to Cikin post, there are five categories of people personality as follows:-
- Openness
- Neutral
- Analytical
- Relational
- Decisive

Definitely we will fall into one of this categories. Actually there is a set of question to assess which categories we are but unfortunately I could not found the question. I hope I can find that question in order to help you all in accessing your-self. For me I'm in R, A and N.

If we are creative imaginators (openness) we need to learn how to: -
- Communicate our ideas to others
- Be patient with formal structures
- Work along with others
- Deal with inflexible people
- Be part of a team
- Avoid the perception that they are argumentative
- Respect and value others' traditions
- Manage bureaucracy
- Cope with routine tasks
- Work within a system
- Advocate for changes in the rules when necessary
- Avoid being seen as implusive
- Avoid being misunderstood by others

If we are neutral experts we need to learn how to
- Cope with sudden changes
- Not to be too sensitive
- Get out of our comfort zone
- Take initiative when required
- Deal with conflict situations
- Not just wait for instructions
- Be less possessive
- Share our emotions with others
- Overcome our passiveness
- Manage aggressive people
- Be more confident of ourselves
- Not to accept others' opinions too easily
- Get more involved with life
- Become more assertive


If we are analytical thinkers we need to learn how to
- Express our feelings
- Become more approachable
- Make decissions more quickly
- Have more warmth in their interactions with others
- Use eye contact in communicating with others
- Be less formal
- Take calculated risks
- Be more flexible
- More tolerant of temporary inperfections
- Delegate task to others
- Not worry too much
- Not be easily hurt by criticisms from others


If we are relators we need to learn how to
- Be punctual
- Work alone
- Be more precise and accurate in our communications
- Be less emotional
- Think before we express an opinion
- Cope with not being limelight
- Just be part of crowd
- Not talk too much
- Be more organised
- Be more careful
- Describes things accurately
- Remember what we have promised to others

If we are decisives we need to learn how to
- Work with others in a team
- Listen to others
- Be more gentle with others
- Deal with slower people
- Be less competitive
- Sensitive to others feelings
- Work in a structure
- Learn to apologise quickly
- Deal with our quick temper
- Avoid being stubborn
- Be less argumentative
- Be realistic about risks involved in a situation

Hope this guide can help in achieving EQ.

Why ICT Needs Emotionally Intelligent Team Leaders?

This paper was written by John Batros (Information Age). He argues that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a necessary if not sufficient condition for ICT team leaders. This paper described upon recent research into the EI of Australian managers and use Swinburne University of Technology's Genos EI model to introduce the concept. Using the five dimensions of the model as a platform, arguments were being mounted for the positive effects for leaders and followers in all groups, in particular ICT teams.

This paper will argue that ICT leaders will need to become more emotionally intelligent to ensure that optimal expression of emotion is brought to bear on rational ICT decisions in groups to maximize productivity. Here are five dimensions of EI discussed in this paper. (Ground rules for ICT team leaders)

1. Be aware of your emotions and express them

The ICT team leader must become an aware expresser and lead the way in modeling these behaviors, encouraging others to learn them. There are three zones of awareness - the Outer Zone (everything outside me including others and the tasks we have to do), the Middle Zone (thinking, judging, intellectualizing, analyzing, blaming) and the Inner Zone (feelings, emotions, sensations).

2. Recognize your ICT team members' emotions and empathize with them

• Empathy: Recognizing others' emotions helps ICT leaders enter the worlds of their followers.
• Understanding emotion in others produces trust.
• Reduces defensiveness in the team.
• Allows thoughts to find thinkers
• Recognizing emotion in others includes and acknowledges their worth in the team.
• Leader as empathizer.

3. Use your feelings to influence decision making in your ICT team

• Feelings enhance rational judgment.
• Gut feel produces intuition. When team members pay attention to the irrational, new ideas emerge by themselves. "Lose your mind and come to your senses" - (Herman & Korenich, 1977.)
• Emotions produce synergistic outcomes for the ICT team.
• The leader as team facilitator: The successful ICT team leader does not lose his or her critical faculties, but suspends them occasionally, inviting emotional expression to excite team members to their best efforts.

4. Manage the emotions in interpersonal relations with your ICT team members

• The leader as container
• Assertively managing conflict: ICT team leaders must adapt their management styles to each stage of group development. Each requires emotional management so that the social or maintenance needs of the team are met. Only when people's needs for inclusion, safety, influence, belonging, acceptance and respect are met can they get on with the task. It is critical that ICT team leaders have highly developed interpersonal skills as well as knowledge of their domains.
• Treating feelings as data about the team

5. Appropriately control your own emotions as ICT team leader

Control your own emotions when you are severely anxious.

For further understanding pls read the full article...

Emotional Intelligent (EI) and Project Management

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability of a person to manage his or her emotions as well as to manage the emotions of others. Emotional intelligence is much deeper than just having good interpersonal skills. It is being aware of and controlling our own emotions and being empathic enough to perceive and manage the emotions of others. That does not mean controlling others, it means understanding others’ emotions well enough to lead them to better performance (Allen Stewart, 2002).

Project managers need to master more than the requisite technical knowledge in order to run any project successfully. Without the skills necessary to lead effectively, project can quickly fall apart. Availability of people to manage a project is important, but how people is managed to get the best performance is more important. Tapping the potential and motivating individuals and teams to work towards a common goal is a job of project manager. Project managers must be competent in managing the human side of projects as well as the technical components.

Projects are fundamentally about relationships. An excellent project manager always developing and sustaining relationships, then as the result successful projects. Emotional intelligence can help project managers by:

• Provides an ability to use emotions to better understand what is going on with the team members and how to best motivate them to achieve the project objectives.
• Provides them with tools to understand the emotions of their stakeholders to build strong relationships that will provide a fertile environment for a successful project.
• Help them to appreciate the importance and timing of courageous truth-telling.
• Anticipate and recognize some of the breakdowns that occur with people on the team and how to best avoid or deal with them.
• Recognizing the fine line between dealing with project conflict and dealing with bullies or narcissist personalities.

So, are we capable to manage our emotion and ready to be the successful project manager?

Three steps for successful IT outsourcing

There are three basic steps that companies should always take - but sometimes don't - when it comes to choosing how to make an IT outsourcing deal, says analyst house Forrester Research.

1. Organizations should not opt for an outsourcing model without working out how it will affect and fit in with its IT landscape.
2. Companies must consider how to manage IT and staff resources when outsourcing.
3. They should ensure the outsourcing model makes sound economic sense and any additional IT spending is taken into account.
   

Taking these steps allows a company to properly evaluate what sort of IT outsourcing model will suit it best.

Read the full article..

Google media power

We all knew and heard the story about how Google become number one search engine, and then they started to expand its services to email, blog, YouTube and the list goes on. Some of its earlier acquisition tends to be inconsistent with its then business model, but look at them now, high and mighty and it seems that they have conquered the Internet. The most valuable media company in the world right now is not Disney or News Corp. or Time Warner (owner of Time) but Google, which helps people find stuff on those endless online shelves.

Recent news, using its YouTube, Google Inc. will show videos on thousands of other Web sites and hoping to make profit from ads attached to the clips. This is certainly something that we could predicted, another way of how Google making money through its advertisement programs.

With the new twist, Web sites participating in AdSense now can sign up to specify the kinds of YouTube videos they want shown on their pages. A Web site focused on automobiles, for instance, might want to display YouTube videos about cars and other vehicles. Google will share the ad revenue generated by the YouTube videos with the content provider and the Web site that shows the clips.

Personally, I don't really like the ads that already there in the websites, now with the video ads around, it will only create the unnecessary traffic. I guess that if you control the power of media, people will still going to stick around no matter what you do.

Read the full article.

Google Ads on YouTube

SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDILFITRI!

MAAF ZAHIR & BATIN.

Ten Commandments of Project Management

Projects are essentially operated in an environment in which Uncertainties, Complexities and Pressure of time are foremost realities. It is about managing changes to the way the organization works and the way in which people do and react to changes in their work. Project managers need all the help they can get to succeed. So here, James Kerr coined a list of the Ten Commandments of Project Management in Computerworld.

I. Thou Shalt Narrow Project Scope

II. Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Fat Team

III. Thou Shalt Require Full-Time Business Participation

IV. Thou Shalt Establish Project Review Panels

V. Thou Shalt Not Provoke Burnout

VI. Thou Shalt Seek Outside Assistance as Needed

VII. Thou Shalt Empower Project Teams

VIII. Thou Shalt Use Project Management Tools

IX. Thou Shalt Reward Success

Read the full article ...

Kerr is a former CIO and current president of Kerr Consulting Group in Cromwell, Conn.

Communicating IT risks: Business Managers vs IT-People

We regularly hear that "there is no such thing as an IT project, only business initiatives." But we do not need to look far to find business initiatives being managed as IT projects. In this class we often hear Pn. Mardziah says that the purpose of IT is to bring profit to the business. And we have been discussing a lot of this topic including some details from the paper "Does IT Matter" and "IT Doesn't Matter".

Reality bites:
We always found that it's hard to align the business objectives and the IT investments. Typical business managers see IT as strategically important to future success. But most of them do not understand technology risks. We, the IT-technical people know that IT-related risks are vital to business success – but are clueless by these business people. Why? Because there is little common language between business and IT.

The scenario is like:
By DEFAULT IT people have many technical ideas and aware about IT risks but hard opening our mouth and speaking or explaining things in simple common language (many PARAMETERS but UNKNOWN DEFINITION).
Those business managers have lack technical facts, unaware of IT risks and only think about profits, profits (VOID ERRORNEOUS SYNTAX, RETURN profit).
Consequently there is DATA TYPE MISMATCH between our explanations and those business managers' objectives.
Therefore our ideas are being ABORT by them.
They will give BAD COMMAND for final decision that welcome some problems (VIRUS) and lead to business failure - SYSTEM BREAKDOWN.

I remember that during my first-degree there is an Ustaz used to say "Awak ni semua betul-betul la orang komputer. Tekan ENTER baru nak cakap. Kalau dekat business school, saya baru nak buka mulut, diorang dah berebut-rebut nak cakap. Sampai rasa nak tekan CTRL+ALT+DEL".

What he is trying to say is that we – the IT-people are lack of communication skills. It is always hard for us to open our mouth and throw our opinions. But those business managers – they love to speak but lack of technical facts. Sometimes we are eager to speak, but difficult to explain things for them to understand. We speak different language.

The fact is IT is liken to an iceberg - only the tip of an iceberg, or the positive impact of its implementation, is visible. This is what those business managers aware. Just under the water line - the gigantic bulk of the iceberg or IT risks is hidden from view. They are unaware of it but we are. Hence, we hardly explain it to them. Often parts of the gigantic iceberg break-off, floating and shatter onto the surface. Likewise fragments of the IT risks could snap-off, hacks and ruins to the initial IT project - caused many problems and conflicts - lead to IT and business failure.

Those business people and audit committees may not have all the skills they need to understand and deal with IT risks, while mechanisms for communicating risks to them may also not be effective enough. My personal opinion says that most IT professionals lack the ability to communicate risk and its potential business impact in a way that the business managers understand.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... "one of the first things that he and other project leaders did was to collocate 20 business managers with 40 IT workers to help them stay in sync on the project's products and timetables. " ...

... "It’s a huge challenge for IT organizations to stay aligned with the business on projects" ...

... "business managers sometimes fail to grasp what effect IT projects will have on their operations and how much their internal business processes may have to be amended to work with new systems." ...

Read full article...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After all assessing IT-related risk is a team game. IT professionals are the one who understand the technology. Then again business managers are the one who lack the technical background but could extend the potential business implications. We need to bring together both IT professionals and business managers into one ring and speak the similar plain language to manage IT risks.

SHARING VIOLATION. ACCESS DENIED. ABORT? =)