Dhoni's Coolness at Workplace

MSD and his calmness on and off the field goes hand-in-hand. In fact, the whole world gets together to appreciare his coolness and ability to make decisions under pressure. So, just wondering how about importing that kind of calmness at your workplace! I am sure many of us are already with great ability to demonstrate cool head under pressure situations or to handle nervy situations without getting hyperactive. But, is there a flip side of the same?

Absolutely no doubt that ability to keep calm during pressure situations (read, escalations) helps to bring in order, to make correct decisions and to resolve the pressure situations effectively and quickly. Specially as a leader, this showcase your maturity, competency to handle tricky situations and finally, helps to earn respect from your followers. With customers, your calmness can provide immense sense of reliability and assurity which in turn increases customer satisfaction.

Many may argue that the above mentioned points are more of bookish and in reality, people/leaders either don't practice the same and/or are not encouraged to practice the same. Even this is true for naturally calm headed people. I have observed leaders interpreting calmness mistakenly with nagativity. If an employee keeps it cool and easy during a important conversation or in a pressure situation, the leader interprets - 'this guy is not taking things seriously!' or, 'this guy takes things too casually, you can't trust him!' and so on. So, not being hyper portraying you as lazy and casual fellow which definitely won't help in next appraisal!

Another employee is naturally very cool and very meticulous about his time management. He plans out this day to day jobs very well and quite naturally he never gets late for a meeting. With his time management and calmness, he never needs to rush to the discussion room with unnaturally bigger strides. But unfortunately for him, his boss perceives this differently - more precisely, boss thinks this employee as lazy, not proactive (proactiveness is a phrase used in IT industry for reasons and for no reasons), showing no urgency, lacking seriousness and so on. And, quite expectedly this reflects in next cycle of appraisal and pay hike.

So, how to deal with it? You may be natually calm. Or, you may be bringing in calmness with conscious practice. For both the challenge at workplace would be the same. My thoughts: leverage your calmness and cool head at all places where it may reap benefits e.g. while handling a team issue or a customer issue, while handling high critical time bound activity and on. But if you have a boss with 'negativity' or 'lack of knowledge about being cool headed', be careful with him/her. Make sure you are taking care of body language consciously & calmly because, you don't want to give that guy a chance!