6 Secret Ways To Ensure That Everyone Starts Loving You At Your Workplace And In Life

A small brief/cheat sheet on how to become happier and more happy, agile, and bring more exuberance to your work life and in your personal life at large in these challenging times.

1. Everyone wants to be loved in life.
2. Everyone wants to be pampered in life.
3. Everyone needs attention and more attention.
4. Everyone needs to be at the helm of attention.

However, there is a small caveat.

Some people speak their hearts out, while others do not even blink an eyelid and never utter a word. These are the people who generally take the back seat in life – though they wish for the moon and stars, they seldom bring that out or speak in general. You could perhaps call them “introverts or the reserved lot”; however, I always call them the “silent mass.”

The “silent mass” is the most prevalent class among us in our work life as peers, leaders, managers, colleagues, etc. Why am I hell-bent on pointing out to them that they need to read this brief and get ahead in the curve of life and excel? They need a fair chance, don’t they?

I have always been part of the outgoing mass till I last remember – extrovert, if you may want to call it. However, this did not happen overnight; I can assure you that. I started becoming an extrovert only after my school days. Before my school days, I was the real “ silent mass,” and this is how I changed.

Like many of us who had the privilege of studying in a convent school in a small town, getting ahead of the curve was always an enlightening thought, but there was a hindsight to it. Sometimes, you have to be a little outspoken to get what you want, and this is where my cup always slipped my lips. I could not even utter a word in English till I was in 7th std. The best part is that I was great in English grammar and vocabulary, but the fear of the stage and the fear of speaking out in front of a class or people in general always meant an arduous task that was always too tall a hurdle to cross. Each day and every day, I used to pep myself up; however, when it came to climbing that flight of stairs to deliver my news on a Friday morning in front of the assembly, somehow, I choked.

Well, this continued for some time till I changed my school, and then I met my new English teacher who not only taught me how to deal with stage fright but instilled in me a newfound love to speak fearlessly and without any hiccups. Suddenly, her mentoring took me to a different level. I was always among the people in my class who could talk, debate, or relish a contemporary discussion without batting an eyelid.

Fast forward to social life and peers, leaders, entrepreneurs, co-founders, and awesome founders that I have had the chance to work with in my life and work who have taught me some of the most amazing things about how to change and tune oneself to be liked and loved rather than the entire universe to change for you.

Well, the first part is easy – Changing and modulating yourself for the universe rather than expecting it to change or align for yourself. Also, we all need to remember that change is not an overnight journey; it is a tedious daily rigor of practicing and building pathways of where you want to go and putting a daily cadence to reach there – step by step.

If you are reading this and are willing to change or think of a change within you, then let me assure you that this will completely change the way you look at yourself and how people will start looking at you. The best part of this is that it will completely change the way people look at you in work and personal life from this day onwards.

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So here are the six ways that you can change yourself and become a better version so that people in your workplace and life genuinely love you –

1. Be Willing To Unlearn and Relearn
2. Talk Less, Listen More
3. Support People Without Any Expectations
4. Have Empathy
5. Be Willing To Take The Extra Step
6. Stay Away From Negative People and Circumstances

Let’s go one by one so that you understand what this means to you and how you can evolve as a person to become a better person, a beautiful version of yourself.

Be Willing To Unlearn and Relearn

I have learned in life and seen many successful managers, leaders, and entrepreneurs who are successful and super happy have one thing in common – their learning curves for new things – whether process, controls, technology, or, for that matter, way to work to be more efficient never ends. I have seen them always hustling and trying to get the best out.

Again, there is a caveat.

They started from the fact that you have to first unlearn things from whatever source or time you have learned about some specific work, ideology, or process. Once you are “willing” to unlearn, then your next benchmark of relearning comes in. This is where you have opened the floodgates of your mind to let new thought processes come in and get into your new thoughts. This is where the whole perspective changes to a new alignment, and you are willing to go the extra mile to unlearn and relearn. This is a simple principle of how someone can adopt a growth mindset. I have done a deep dive into this in one of my books – Don’t Sit and Brood.

Talk Less, Listen More

Everyone wants to talk and rant; most of us do, but it takes a monumental task to start listening to the other person. This is where it all starts to change the moment you decide that you will listen first and understand what the other person is saying or trying to say.

Most likely, this is where most people falter. They are so interested in their own lives, problems, issues, etc., that they are not even bothered to listen to what is going around with their peers, friends, bosses, or neighbors, for that matter. If I have fallen on the ground, that means the world has fallen, too.

You will be perceived and taken for a better person the moment you start lending your ears to people around you. It is not that you need to give solutions; it is just that sometimes people want their colleagues or peers just to hear them out. I repeat, people are sometimes not looking at solutions but looking for folks who can hear them out without judging them.

Support People Without Any Expectations

Both in enterprises and startups, people across various teams and functions look for undying support and want to listen to their points of view regarding various facts about how they are dealing with work. Sometimes, it gets too claustrophobic for them to utter a word and reach out to others. This is where you could always step in.

This is the first and foremost thing that folks like to identify both in enterprises and startups whom they look forward to supporting. Sometimes, you find that an amazing HR manager has been the fulcrum of the organization where everyone goes to look for support, and sometimes, you will find an operational head who supports cross-functional teams to do better and get them across the tough curves of our daily rut.

As a person, if you are willing to support your colleagues as a leader, manager, or as peer, then people always have the advantage to walk up to you and discuss their issues, whether personal or professional, so that you can advise them fairly and well.

If you are that person who can support other folks, then take the extra step today and help out folks who need that support from their colleagues. In no time, you will not just be the center of help and support but be known as a colleague who people can trust and reach out to in the worst of times. This builds that solid culture of support within the organization as you never know how many people are looking up to you for the same.

Have Empathy

Not many people in the organization realize that having empathy is a sign of a leader who is willing to understand and lend a helping hand to support you. If you can have empathy loaded on your sleeve, you have basically opened the doors for your peers or colleagues to not only trust you but look at you as someone who is human enough to understand what and where they want to go or have reached.
It also means that as a person, you are willing to empathize with the situation and give them some suggestions on how they can reach their optimum levels without being sarcastic or judgemental.

This is the inherent support system that many growing enterprises miss out on. More likely than not, this is a top-down system where the possibility of putting empathy into the culture starts at the CXO level and seeps down to the last executive in the organization. Anyone would love to work with leaders and organizations who are empathy-driven.

Must Read: 10 Ways to Resist Peer Pressure Without Looking Weird

Be Willing To Take The Extra Step

This is where the entrepreneurial mindset hits the employee mindset, and you realize the big difference between them. If you are an entrepreneurial mindset-oriented person, you are most likely to multitask and get things done even if they do not lie in your purview, but you are inclined to help the enterprise or the startup that you are working for.

I am not saying that you have to be a jack of all trades to get things done, but you should be “willing” to burn the midnight oil to ensure that you support cross-functional initiatives that are beyond your KPIs or OKRs, too. This brings more comfort, dedication, and accountability to your role and character, irrespective of whether you are a CXO or an executive in the organization.

People who are willing to take the extra step always stand tall with an entrepreneurial mindset and are often called for extraordinary opportunities, given the kind of work that they can get done. They are the real hustlers in life and work. These are also the people who are loved across the ranks and always build that awesome culture within the organization of hustling and getting things done irrespective of what conditions are time and again.

Ask yourself this question time and again – “ Am I willing to take that extra step today ?”

Stay Away From Negative People and Circumstances

Staying away from the naysayers, cribbers, and negative trait mindset folks in any organization, whether an enterprise or a startup, is the last thing you should look at both from an organizational standpoint and a cultural standpoint.

Negative people not only bring negativity to the whole gamut of things but also ensure that the culture setting is also negative and dark. It’s like that dystopian movie where the negative person always tries to become the hero of the cast and misleads everyone into thinking that the earth is flat and not round and creates that society of flat earthers who believe in what they believe and pull down everyone to their level.

Sometimes, you need to mark and let go of these people and circumstances so that your mind is full of positive outlook and the least negative surprises. This will not only help you talk positively but also believe, interact, contribute, and discuss positively. You will soon find out that you will always be known for a positive outlook, unlike people who are always negative and trying to bring down everyone to their sorry state of affairs and blaming the organization and people for the chaos.

Be the positive lighthouse of the organization and stay away strictly from negative outlooks and people, irrespective of whoever they are and whatever they do.

I am sure these six golden ways will bring some light to your work and life and will challenge the status quo that you have been thinking about for a long time. The last, not the least, thing in the whole process is being kind to yourself and loving yourself for what you really are and believing in it. This changes the whole spectrum of how you finally see the world at large at your workplace and in life in general.

If you are someone who can change the world for good and be loved for that, work towards it and get that kind of outlook in life, work, or business. It might sound hypothetical, but once you start treading on the right pathways of life and work, you have just one milestone to reach and hit – being great at what you do and sharing and building an awesome culture around you whether you are at work or in life.

Godspeed success to you.

Ravi Kikan
Global CMO, United We Care