Touching story of appreciation

Story of Appreciation

            
One young academically excellent person went to apply for a managerial position in a big company.

He passed the first interview, the director did the last interview, made the last decision.

The director discovered from the CV that the youths academic achievements were excellent all the way, from the secondary school until the postgraduate research,
Never had a year when he did not score.
The director asked,
Did you obtain any scholarships in school?
The youth answered none.
The director asked,
Was it your father who paid for your school fees?
The youth answered,
My father passed away when I was one year old, it was my mother who paid for my school fees.
The director asked,
Where did your mother work?
The youth answered,
My mother worked as clothes cleaner.
The director requested the youth to show his hands.
The youth showed a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect.
The director asked,
Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?
The youth answered,
Never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books.
Furthermore, my mother can wash clothes faster than me.

The director said,
I have a request. When you go back today, go and clean your mothers hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.*
The youth felt that his chance of landing the job was high. When he went back, he happily requested his mother to let him clean her hands. His mother felt strange, happy but with mixed feelings, she showed her hands to the kid.

The youth cleaned his mothers hands slowly. His tear fell as he did that. It was the first time he noticed that his mothers hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises in her hands. Some bruises were so painful that his mother shivered when they were cleaned with water.

This was the first time the youth realized that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes everyday to enable him to pay the school fee. The bruises in the mothers hands were the price that the mother had to pay for his graduation, academic excellence and his future.

After finishing the cleaning of his mothers hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother.

That night, mother and son talked for a very long time.

Next morning, the youth went to the directors office.

The Director noticed the tears in the youths eyes, asked:

Can you tell me what have you done and learned yesterday in your house?

The youth answered,

I cleaned my mothers hand, and also finished cleaning all the remaining clothes
The Director asked,
please tell me your feelings.

The youth said,

Number 1,
I know now what is appreciation. Without my mother, there would not be the successful me today.

Number 2,

By working together and helping my mother, only I now realize how difficult and tough it is to get something done.

Number 3,

I have come to appreciate the importance and value of family relationship.

The director said,
This is what I am looking for to be my manager. I want to recruit a person who can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the sufferings of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life. You are hired.

Later on, this young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates. Every employee worked diligently and as a team. The companys performance improved tremendously.

Moral : You can let your kid live in a big house, eat a good meal, learn piano, watch a big screen TV. But when you are cutting grass, please let them experience it. After a meal, let them wash their plate and bowl together with their brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love them in a right way. You want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day their hair will grow grey, same as the mother of that young person.
            

The most important thing is your kid learn how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty and learn the ability to work with others to get things done.

Soft Skills for Success

By Sumit Bhattacharjee, The Hindu, August 24, 2010

One of the fashionable terms floating around these days is “soft skills”. But what exactly are these soft skills? If we have a term soft skills, does that mean there are skills which are hard also!

‘Skill' as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is “The ability to do something well”. And management gurus relate soft skills to emotional quotient and define soft skills as ‘a cluster of personality traits'. During the 70s and 80s, recruitment in companies and later growth in the career were measured in terms of hard skills (intelligent quotient) possessed by a person.

These included knowledge in a particular field, experience in working on a set of machines, ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practical applications, logical and analytical reasoning etc. Most of these skills are generally imparted as a part of the academic curriculum at school and college and therefore an academically successful student was expected to succeed in life and career too. However, over a period of time, the dynamically changing society, technology and economy have brought about a phenomenal shift in the skills required for a person to succeed in career and in life.

“This sea change was precipitated by many developments which inter alia include the macro economic shift from secondary sector to tertiary sector, the enhanced complexities in work places like the increased emphasis on team work, greater participation of women and the concomitant gender sensitivity and also superior benchmarks of quality and pace,” says Mohammed Abdullah, director of Conduira, a training and placement institution. Recent studies have clearly pointed out the fact that irrespective of the industry, job type or rank, there are a few traits that high performing individuals possess. All such skills today are being clubbed and termed as ‘soft skills'.

“Typically, soft skills can be defined as the skill that enables an individual to engage and interact effectively with others, obtain acceptance, build consensus and provide assistance, leadership and direction,” says P.V. Rama Sasank of Conduira.

The hard skills are usually easy to observe, quantify and measure and thus easy to train and acquire. However, soft skills - being more behavioural in nature - are a result of various influences and interactions one has had in his or her life since childhood. These influences have long term implications - both positive and negative. Hence, most of the individuals, by the time they reach an age of employability, already possess a few soft skills - positive as well as negative - and therefore soft skill training includes a lot of unlearning and relearning issues. “Many students confuse the concept of soft skills with English communication skills. This is not really true. Communication skills are very much a part of the soft skills, but only a ‘part'. Soft skills go much further enabling the individual to discharge his or her responsibilities in the most effective and efficient way possible both at work and at home,” say Abdullah.

What are the soft skills that organisations look for in a candidate who is just entering the workforce? “Primarily the companies look for the ability to learn. In addition, companies today are surmounting geographical barriers and as a result, teams often comprise employees from different cultural and geographical backgrounds. Being able to appreciate these diverse views and assimilate them is a challenge and recent graduates are expected to adapt to these changes as soon as possible. Further, in a multi-cultural team, an ability to communicate becomes super-necessary and fluency in business language English and National language Hindi has become an imperative. Business meetings over telephone are norm of the day and e-mail has become the standard business communication - therefore a student is expected to have not just oral but also good written communication skills – non-ambiguity, conciseness and crispness being the desired parameters. The biggest challenge, a student faces when he is on board, is the ability to work in a team.

“And last but not the least, companies often place good faith in their employees and often give them sizeable responsibilities very early in their career. It is not surprising to find a 25-year-old leading a 30-member team and being responsible for revenues up to Rs. 500 crore. In such a scenario, ethics and integrity become supremely important,” says Sasank.

The first step in developing good soft skills is to unlearn the negative traits developed and relearn. Unless they have seen success in applying a new skill or method, they are not convinced that a change is required.

“Another major reason for the failure of many training programmes is also the individual's expectation of a fast result. Soft skills take time to be developed. One should usually persevere to put a skill learnt in practice so that it becomes a habit and seeps into one's behaviour,” says Abdullah.

Regards,
Mohammed Shakir.