"Soften" mantra for Fresh Life

“SOFTEN” Mantra for UCOites - P A Thomas
Member of Faculty

A high school student once gave a thought for the day in the school assembly. He said, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” What a beautiful statement! Many of us live our lives so mechanically that repetitive boredom creeps in without our knowledge and tomorrows do not hold any excitement for us. The re-affirmation that today is the first day can bring about a drastic change in one’s outlook on today and the tomorrows.


Just look around us. What does the present and future have to offer us? The answer lies in us and nowhere else. For some, tomorrow is the threshold of a new dawn, a dawn of hope, opportunities, and never before possibilities’.
And tomorrow is here. Tomorrow is already here to be encountered, challenged and won. But, we have to bear in mind that the tomorrows we are going to face are going to be significantly different from the ones we have faced in the past. The tomorrows we are speaking of, present you with mind-boggling changes in technology, family and lifestyles.

Life has become comfortable, distances have become shorter, capabilities have enhanced, and the speed of life has accelerated so much that no one has time for trivia. Technology has empowered man to such an extant that it is not only enhancing individual freedom, but also bringing us face to face with break neck competition and speed. Technology will turn the spotlight on the individual, small or big, and these individuals will have access to information.

If one looks at the economical changes, one can clearly discern the fact that economic alliances are deciding the political equations in this world, which is slowly but surely shrinking into a global village. The Mega corporations are vying with political states to gain control over business and even running of the industry and business. Business has started moving to where people are rather than people moving to where work is. The tremors of competition are already felt by hitherto protected sectors like Insurance and Banking. Liberalization, Privatization and globalization have put India on a roller coaster drive and competition is becoming stiffer by the minute in any service area.

People’s life styles also changed. People look for quality at the right price. They are also conscious of the brand the products carry. Exclusivity of the products/services is also of concern to the customers. People are concerned about speed of service, and convenience has become a decisive factor in our lives in choosing what and when. Value addition and customer delight have become the order of the day. The choice available around has become abundant to the extent that it made the customer virtually THE KING!

Families have become nuclear. The speed of lives and careers have had made dents in relationships. In India, the family concept is still considered stronger. The elders are still respected not merely for their age, but for their inherent wisdom. Human values, however, are in for a major shakeup. For instance, respect as a value will be there, but it will be behavior-bound than role-bound. Children will only respect us if they feel that we are worthy of respect and not because of our age.
Yes! The scenario is spell binding yet and exciting too. Spell binding because we have never seen such momentous changes in our lives. Exciting because we are going to live in this challenging time when our tomorrows reach us faster than we can imagine.

How do we cope with our today and tomorrows?

The first step is to become a VISIONARY. Having a vision can help us in charting our goals because vision gives clarity to our goals. Vision is the preferred future state and presents the bigger canvas beyond. But how many of us are visionaries?
In this world, every single sane individual is a visionary. But we are visionaries only in patches. We envision whenever we want to and whenever we know that there is some personal benefit accruing out of that envisioning. Most of us are not visionaries on a continuous basis. I am a visionary when I think of my daughters’ education. I am very concerned about her marks, her entrance exam, her admission etc.So all my actions are based on that vision of mine. I will be very passionate about this vision of mine and it will engage all my time and effort if so needed. At the same time, I may have views on many other matters of common interest and concern and would have my likes, dislikes and views about such matters and would also sincerely like to do something about it. But finally nothing happens or goes the way I planned and I start complaining that the system is wrong and what a single person like me can do in this regard.
I conveniently forget that I was the same single person who moved heaven and earth to get admission for my daughter in the best professional college.
In simple terms if I am passionate about anything and I have clear-cut vision to go ahead, I WILL ACHIEVE WHATEVER I WANT TO.

Having a vision and no action plan to reach the vision is no good at all. Having a crystal clear action plan and executing the action plan is also equally important.

However, the current scenarios also will present you with situations in which you will have to choose and change your direction. It is not going to be a bed of roses. It is going to be one mad rush for being one up. There is going to be exhilaration of victory and heartaches of setbacks and failures. It is here that we have to be prepared in our current scenario to face the challenge as they come.

It is here that you need to look into yourself and find out what your inherent strengths and weaknesses are and try to steady yourself for the future. Knowledge of self indicates where you are standing and then you can decide where and which direction you should go.

Moreover, this also helps you in being levelheaded in success and failure. Resilience helps you in failure, but what about managing success? There were so many who were mighty successful, but could not manage their success very well. However, some manage to tide over their difficulties and emerge successful, proving their ability to challenge the setbacks and come back with a bang. Henry Ford, Abraham Lincoln etc are people who dared to believe they can and they came back.

The current scenario should spur us to change and to accept the changes as inevitable and to shape ourselves to face tomorrows with grit and guts. The current scenario should give you the added impetus to go ahead and challenge the status quo and to evolve the right strategy to meet the tomorrows head-on.

Let us start now--- to create a tomorrow today with what we have got today, because we have it within ourselves. Let us create building blocks to go beyond success even.

Building blocks for Success have to be developed, stacked up and held together by a personality who has the stuff in him to show the world that he matters. There are many who choose to be also-rans, but the person who builds his/her tomorrows today with the blocks he/she had created, will be the person to whom the whole world will look up to. The records are meant to be broken and the road to excellence is always under construction.

Let us get started to be the benchmarks in our banking industry.
Start challenging yourselves as leaders.

Convert yourselves to be total Quality Person

Personal grooming has donned vital roll in this challenging scenario. To be acceptable to the people as a person is more important before they accept your bank and banking products. We all are ambassadors of our Bank. Remember first impression is the best impression. Remember we will never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Body language
Human beings, the most advanced version of living beings created by God, was given the unique ability to communicate verbally and they went ahead and innovated on so many languages, so much so that today, we gave a language each for each section of the society. It has spearheaded communication revolution. However, it has had its share of disadvantages as well. Verbal communication took the forefront and nonverbal communication was made a complementary language.

Before languages were born, human beings communicated only non-verbally. Sign language was the order of the day. Even today, any child born need not be taught body language. Every child understands body language. Yes, it is the original language software that God gave us.

Body language has become an important area for research of late; people have started accepting the importance of body language. There is only 16% impact in verbal communication. But the impact of nonverbal communication is as high as 70%.

Body language is also known as Kinesics. Kinesics is the science of movement. Body language can be broadly divided into three parts-gestures, postures and facial expressions.

Body language is the art of seeing what others are thinking. Seventy percent of the communication exchanged are nonverbal or depend on body language.
While communicating, effectiveness doubles when one concentrates on two aspects:
1. Understand what is not being said by others
2. Others must understand what you say.
It is easily said than done.However, as someone gains awareness of nonverbal behavior, and attempts to interpret the body language of others, he or she becomes inwardly conscious of his or her own gestures. This results in more effective communication.

To understand body language, one can do the following:
1. Keep an open mind.
2. Observe your own posture and gestures when you are in different moods and frames of mind. Try to interpret them.
3. Observe the body language of others. These movements can indicate thoughts and emotions
4. Learn to read and interpret body and spoken language and draw conclusions. In other words, do not jump to conclusions just by seeing one gesture, posture or expression.
5. Learn to control your body language, sending only those signals that you truly wish to send.
6. Treat your body language as a special language and master the same with practice.
How to improve, tune and polish ones body language?

Use the SOFTEN technique. The mnemonic SOFTEN can give you the direction to practice effective and positive body language.

SMILE- Open smile open doors.
OPEN POSTURE-Always avoid defensive and closed gestures and postures. Crossing your arms and legs can give a closed look.
FORWARD LEAN- Lean forward when you wish others.
TOUCH-Touch people mentally and physically at the right place in the right manner at the right time. Observe and respect others’ privacy and be careful of the culture and background of the person in front of you.
EYE CONTACT- with your eyes, look at the face of those who face you. Taking the eyes off gives a signal that either you are ignorant, or you are hiding or you are lying!
NOD- Apart from agreement , this is the sure shot signal that you are listening and that you will not interrupt.
SOFTEN your behavior. Be polite to your customers. WIN over the hearts of the people by your SOFTEN techniques.

You don’t have to be taught the science of body language, but you have to trim and polish the same for effective communication. Effective communication is all about touching others. SOFTEN technique has got a major role to play in building relationships; which in turn will be translated to generating business for OUR BANK.
Best Wishes From- P A Thomas,Member of Faculty ,Central Staff College,Ucobank,Kolkata
(Courtesy to Shri.G Balachandran,Renowned HR tsainer and former National Executive Vice president of JAYCEES INTERNATIONAL)
Now let us do some exercises which enhances your capability for building relationships
Exercise No.1
There are countless ways to build rapport with customers. The puzzle below contains words that complete the following rapport-building techniques. We’ve done the first one for you.

1. Use the customer’s ­N A M E
2. Say _ _ _ _ _ _ and _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ when asking customers for _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
3. Explain your _ _ _ _ _ _ _ when you have to say _ _ t a customer’s request.
4. Show your _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ in the customer’s needs.
5. Show _ _ _ _ _ _ _ for the customer’s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
6. Let the customer know what his or her _ _ _ _ _ _ _ are.
7. _ _ _ _ _! Even if you’re on the phone!

Words can appear horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and may go in any direction.


Answers: Please, thank you, information, reasons, no, interest, empathy, feelings, options, smile

Exercise No.2
Are You All ears?

Some people are good listeners while others are not. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle-we’re good listeners in some situations, with some people, when discussing some topics. Take a moment now to evaluate your listening skills. How do you believe the following people would rate you – on a scale of 1 to 5- as a listener?(5=best)

Yourself ---------
Your customers ----------
Your spouse ----------
Your boss ----------
Your co-workers ----------
Your best friend ----------

Now add the scores together and plot the total on the listening spectrum



5 10 15 20 25 30
Brick wall The human ear

If your score is below 20 , you must improve your listening habit.

Exercise No.3
Review the following list of poor listening habits and mark each with an “F”(frequently), “S”(sometimes), or “R” (rarely) according to how often you exhibit the tendency:

------- I pretend I’m paying attention when my mind is drifting off.

------- I cut people off or finish their sentences because know what they’re going to say.

------- When someone is speaking to me, I look around the room to see what else is happening.

--------I shuffle papers on my desk or start doing some other task when someone talks too long.

-------- When someone is speaking, I plan what I will say next.

-------- When a person speaks too fast or uses words I don’t understand, I let it go and listen only for what I do understand.

What can you do during the upcoming week to improve your listening skills?
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