Video about assertive techniques

Interview with Sergey Larientev - Head of Engineering Department of BMW Russia (RTH Company)

As one of our task for this blog, i have to make an interview with a person outside our university and who is related to engineering. Therefor i emailed Mr. Sergey Larientev, who is a Head of Engineering Department of BMW Russia (RTH Company), and asked him to answer some of my questions about how he became a boss of a department in a big automobile company.

Good afternoon Mr. Larientev and thank you for answering for my questions.

- Good afternoon Max, i hope it will be useful for your engineering project (report). 

If it's not a problem for you, can you please start with explaining your way of becoming a Head of an Engineering department in such a big company like BMW(RTH).

- I think it's clever to start telling you about my life from post-degree time. By the age of 23 i finished Moscow State University (Automobile Engineering faculty). After, in order to practice my skills about cars i started working in a small cars repairing company which was called "Lisiza". I worked there for 2 years, which was really good and interesting experience for me. The owner of this company gave me very good feedback, so i tried to find a good place to start my professional career.

Can you please tell me what was your first job. 

- So my first job was in small dealer centre, and i've been asked to sell cars in b2b line. During this time i remember that i made i high score of this company, which were 13 sales in one month.

And later you continue working there?

- Yes, for next year i was making a superb results for the owner of this centre. But after, i decided that i have to move on, and actually work by my profession, not like a "selling guy". 

Did you move to another company?

- Absolutely right. The thing is, that i was very lucky, and my wife's brother was an actual owner of another car dealer centre, so he invited me to work as his secretary.

So you took this opportunity? But you said before that you wanted to work in actual engineering department.

- You have to understand that i became his secretary, what was a high jump for me, because his company also sells top class cars such Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Therefore I asked him to give me a work related with Engineering, and after one month he moved me to a CEO position of Engineering Department in his dealer centre.

For how long did you work there? Was it also good experience? 

- Of course, it was something what i was dreaming since i was 18. I worked as a CEO of this department during the next 5 years, by increasing my skills i understood that it's only possible with a hard work and nothing else. I was very lucky that i loved this process, so i didn't feel that i was actually at work, it was more kind of a hobby for me.

We are closer and closer to your current position, am i right?

- Yes, this is right. How i said before, i worked as a CEO of Eng. Dep. for next 5 years. After what i decided that i grew enough in this company, and i wanted to move to somewhere bigger. Therefor with a hard decision i canceled my contract in my wife's brother company, and start looking for another opportunities. 

And how did get into BMW(RTH) company?

- For person like me with almost 13 years of experience in engineering, it was actually easy to find a good job. But i wanted something special and by certain circumstances, i had an opportunity to apply for a CEO of Engineering Department in BMW(RTH). After i sent my application, the company contacted me next day and kindly invited to become a boss of an engineering department. Currently i'm working here for last 11 years and i really enjoy my job, all these people around me and an atmosphere in RTH in general.

This is a really interesting story Mr. Larientev, can you please give to all people who are going to read it, some kind of advice of how to become the same successful as you?

- Work, work and work again. This is the most important lesson which i found for myself for last 20 years. Nothing is going to happen  if you are continue lying in the sofa, you have to move, work really hard and enjoy what you are doing. If you can follow this 3 rules, i can guarantee that you are going to be successful in your life.

Thank you very much for spending your time Mr. Larientiev. Thank you for your advices, i think that they are going to be very useful for my readers and also for me.

- Wish you good luck, Max. Study hard - Fight Easy.

Maximize motivation of people around you

Motivated person is working 10 times better than unmotivated one. Therefore in this post i'm going to tell you about how to motivate people around you.

There are three keys to getting the best out of others and the first of these is appreciation. Every time you think about another person, you cause that person to like themselves more. You raise their self-esteem and you improve their self-image. You make them feel, that what they did was valuable and worthwhile. You actually empower people by expressing appreciation. And the wonderful thing about thanking other people, is that every time you say the words thank you, you like yourself better as well. You feel better inside, you feel happier and more confident with yourself in life. You feel more fully integrated and positive about what you are doing. When you develop an attitude of gratitude that flows forth from you, and all of your interactions with others, you'll be amazed at how popular you will become and how either others will be to help you in whatever you were doing. The second way to make people feel important to raise their self-esteem in give them a sense of power, energy, is by the generous use appraise and approval.

Psychological tests show that when children are praised by the people that they look up to, their energy levels rise their heart rates, in respiratory rates increase and they feel happier about themselves overall. The psychological law of reciprocity that says: «If you make me feel good about myself , I'll find a way to make you feel good about yourself». In other words people were always look for ways to reciprocate your kindness in to order. When you look for every opportunity, you do and say, that make other people feel good about themselves, you'll be astonished that not only how good you feel, but the wonderful things begin to happen all around you. The third way to empower others to build their self-esteem and make them feel important, is simply to pay close attention to them when they talk. The great majority of people are so busy trying to be heard, that they become impatient when others are talking. Remember the most important single activity takes place overtime, is listening intently to the other person when he or she is talking and expressing himself or herself. Again the three general rules for empowering the people around you, which apply everyone you meet, our appreciation approval and attention. Voice your thanks and gratitude to others on every occasion. Praise them for every accomplishment and pay close attention to them when they want to talk, and they'll want to interact with you. These three behaviors alone will make you a master human interaction and will greatly in power the people around you.

Materials which are used in this post are following:

- Picture 

How to limit your stress and define a problem in 4 steps

Stress is one of the most important issue nowadays, almost 90 percent of people fail in different situations because of this problem. Therefor i would like to give some advice in order to avoid it.

Your job is to organize your life and works so as to minimize surprises and problems. However this is not always possible, in spite of your best efforts. If you already facing the fear or worry inducing situation, here are the four steps how to solve this kind of problem. 

• Step number one define the worry situation clearly in writing. Fully half of all problems can be solved just like communities defining them, remember accurate diagnosis is half the cure. 

• Step number two each of the worst possible outcome out the situation. What is the absolute worst that can happen in this problem situation you're facing?! 

• Step number three is resolve to accept the worst should occur. The first step in dealing with any negative situation is to be willing to have itself. Once you resolve to accept the worst should occur your mind will become calm and clear and you'll be ready to take some constructive action. 

• Step number four the final step is to immediately begin doing everything you possibly can to improve upon the worst, to make sure that the worst does not happen. Remember worry is nearly a sustained form of fear cause by indecision. The only real antidote to worry is purposeful action. Gets so busy doing something about your situation, that you don't have time to worry. As you take action your confidence in your courage in sense of control will return and take away your fears.

In order to better understand how to become less stressful, i recommend you to watch this useful YouTube video (click here).

Materials used in this post are following:

- Picture 

- Some of the text ideas

3 main rules of how to bе assertive

There are a lot of articles in the Internet about how to become assertive, so i decided to sum up all information and make a post in which is going to be explained this topic in 3 easy steps.

The main idea of being assertive is that you'll be able to express your desires while respecting the needs of others, and will have the best chance of getting what you want and deserve. Therefor people who are assertive in daily life, are usually the most "progressive" in conversations with other people. So there are 3 easy rules which will help you to be assertive and take the most advantage in any situation.

1. First rule is to try to project confidence to others while you speak. Having confident body language can be very useful in any kind of talks. In order to make better understanding to another people you have to speak slowly and clearly. Rehearsing before an important speech will be also one of the important aspects to make a good and assertive conversation.

     2.  Be honest with yourself. You have to know what do you want to get from this particular conversation. Try to be fare and not to be very hush with the needs of another people. Take responsibility for your own problems and don't put them onto other "shoulders". Stop trying to please everybody, this maybe one of the reasons why you're so afraid to assert yourself. However you have to keep golden middle, therefore you have to stop feeling guilty about not giving people what they want.

    3.  Try to stick to your game plan. Remember your goals and stick to them. Do not veer off course just because the person is not listening to you, belittling you, or trying to torpedo the conversation by acting visibly upset and tricking you into comforting him or her. Say what's on your mind, but with all respect to your listener(s). The main thing in this part is to be assertive without being aggressive.

How i said before that it's very important to hold the "golden middle", this can be possible if you are going to follow these steps(rules) above, however you have to always understand the situation, the person who you are talking to, goal of your listener and your own target,  all of that has to be mixed together and used in all situations where you have to be assertive.

Material used in this post were taken from following resources:

- Picture above

Texting as a method of communication

There are a lot of discussion nowadays about how "last technology" influence on people during the last two decades. In this post i would like to say some useful information about this communication in daily life.

I want to start from very typical phrase, that technology in our daily life are everywhere and of course
they have been grown dramatically during the last ten - twenty years. With internet, which has been created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994, people started creating different ways to communicate with a speed of light. Everything has started from simple emails, people are still writing them and they are the most popular way of communication nowadays. If you can imagine, that there are 2.8 million emails are sent every second, however 90% of them are spam or viruses. Therefore there are still around 300 000 "clean" emails which are sent by people. At the very very beginning, email was only way to communicate with another people. But after "Technology Revolution" at 2004, when Facebook came up, people (specially teens) have started using it more than HotMail, GMail and etc., and left it only for official letters which are still used in all companies and organizations. 

The manner and speed of speaking in Facebook become 5000% faster than it was before with Emails, so people started using it more often. However, for younger generation is much easier to communicate with each other, because they are used to technology. Therefore they try to be connected all the time and always follow the news of what is going on with their friends (circles). 

At the moment, mobile applications such as "Whats App" and "Telegram" are undertaking Facebook by number of messages in second. It means that people started communicated faster and faster, by increasing amount of information to be delivered to another person. 

People are spending more time in social networks and applications, because it's much faster and more comfortable to text someone from your house lying on sofa, than making a meeting. However there are also some bad points about it, which i will try to deliver in my conclusion below.

In my evaluation i would like to say that "latest technology" are one of the most useful and comfortable tool which humanity has ever created, on the other hand people have stopped meeting with another people in order to communicate, and the main problem of it, is that the lack of practice in daily life will make difficult for people in future to practice their communication skills in order to succeed in real life of companies and organizations, where you can't just text someone in order to solve the problem. Professions like doctors, politicians, engineers, policemen and etc., has to know how to use latest digital  communication technologies in order to be on time with all people who are also using these technologies, however, they have to communicate personally more than online, because lack of practise in communication can cost them their job, money or time.

How to improve your public speaking skills?

A lot of people in the World have got problems with public speaking, therefor, in this post i would like to give some advice how to improve your public speaking and become an interesting speaker.

There are three components you must know in order to improve your presentation skills, for better public speaking. If someone asked me how we can build effective communication skills and improve his public speaking, I can quote to him the words of Elbert Hubbard who said : "The only way to learn to speak, is to speak and speak, speak and speak, and speak and speak and speak". 
And while it's true that the only way to become good at anything is by repetition over and over, until it becomes second nature, there are many things that you can do to be more effective speaking in front of audiences.

The starting point in the art of public speaking, is to pick a subject that you really care about. Its to think through the subjects that have had extraordinary impact on you, that subject that you would like to share with others, because you intensely feel that others could benefit from your knowledge. With this, you have a springboard offer, which you can leave into your first public talk.

The second part of public speaking, it's preparation for effective communication. Preparation is more important that anything else except carry about your subject. It's not unusual for a person to spend many hours and days and even week preparing for a single talk. 
If the first two parts are successful public speaking or carrying and preparing, the third part is practicing and improving your presentation skills. If you have voice recorder(usually on mobile phone) or a video camera, record yourself giving the talk from beginning to end, then listen to or watch it and make notes on how you could make it better. If you're using a video camera, look into the camera and use the same facial expressions in the same body gestures that you would use, if you're speaking directly to someone that you like. When you critique yourself, be very hard on yourself. Remember the more honest and objective you can be about how you come across to others, the faster you will build effective communication skills for success.

In my conclusion i would like to finish with a quote, of one of the philosopher, who said: "Practice makes perfect and perfect practice makes it even more perfect." If you practice consistently, you will find that your presentation skills have dramatically improved overtime. Remember your ability to speak effectively in front of people can do more to advance your career and your life than perhaps any other skill you can develop.

Why it is important to overcome your fear of public speaking?

In the last post i wrote about oral presentation and  i realized that it's quite interesting topic to talk about, therefore i would like to continue with explaining you an importance of overcoming your fear of public speaking.

It is very important for us to learn how to overcome our fear of public speaking , for us to continue on our path to success in our studies or  future career. It's n normal and natural for us to be nervous about public speaking, everybody is but, you must overcome that fear to improve your presentation skills.

According to the Guinness Book of records, 54% percent of adults,rank public speaking ahead , have the fear of death, among life's major fears. Most people become nervous, only because of thought of standing up to speak in front of an audience, and their hearts pound. Speaking professionally is not something that you can decide in favor of or against. You don't really have a choice. If you want to realize your full potential in the world, you must learn how to improve your effective communication skills, to better get your message across to other people. We've seen people around us, make extraordinary career jobs, saving themselves as much as 5 to 10 years of time working up the executive ladder, simply by using effective communication skills at corporate meeting. We've observed men and women who put their careers on the fast track, overcoming their fears and developing their presentation skills. It's normal, if you really want something to happen, you have to force yourself against fears of being failed.

So that means that you should pay any price, spent any amount of time, overcome any obstacle, but make a decision right now that you're going to learn to speak well in front of the group and practice your presentation skills consistently. It could be one of the most important decisions you ever make in assuring long-term success in your life.

How we did our team-work presentation and how does "PechaKucha" work?!

In the last Communication Skills lesson, we have been asked to do oral presentations in groups, by using PechaKucha technique. Therefore, in this post i want to tell you our group experience about this presentation.

At the beginning i would like to give you a bit of information, related to our work. First of all our Professor divided us into groups of 4 people. Team - work , about "how to write technical report and make an oral presentation",  has been given on 17th of February, so we had enough time to prepare everything on time. So exactly on that day we started planning and dividing roles in our team. We wrote very good plan with all marks, explanations and main points. After what we started doing everything by using our plan. During last week we worked really hard and finished all writing and presentation work on time. The only problem was, how exactly to use PechaKucha technique. From here i would like to tell you what is PechaKucha, which technique is the best to use, how to speak and other useful information. 

So first things first, by the definition which is given in official web-site, "PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to images."

In our group, we started thinking about the best solution which we can find in order to do our oral presentation in PechaKucha format, and after 2 hours of thinking, researching, planning and trying, we finally found the best way to do it. Our decision seems very easy, on the other hand it's very useful.

Once one of the software CEO's (Jason Fried) said : " It's simple until you make it complicated". 

This phrase amazed our group, because it's so truth that you can't argue with that.

So what we

did, was to make every single slide of our presentation as much simpler as possible, without big text and only one image per slide. You can ask me why, and my answer will be  "make it simple". By cutting all text, we can control all presentation without any worries about time. Avoiding big amount of text, it helps to a speaker to bring all information to audience.

What exactly we did, was one sentence per slide or 2-3 bullet points, and no more. The best way which we found to fill 20 seconds, was reading from the slide together with audience and than add some information on top of it, while people looking at the picture on the slide.

We practiced quite a lot of times, so we know what are we going to speak about. Also we divided every slide in presentation between us, it should help us to be more efficient. In case if someone will forget their text, we have "insurance" that every team-mate learnt all slides by heart. We are going to present our work on the next lesson, so hopefully we will do everything how it should be.

Therefore in my evaluation i want to tell you that i found very useful to work in team, it showed me different aspects, such as making plans together, divide work between all group, create new ideas by using "brainstorm" and other different things. Also, i understood how important is to use your communication skills, in order to finish your work on time and not fail your colleagues. 

Aspergher Syndrome Talk

In one of our last Communication Skills classes, we had a talk about people with "Asperger Syndrome", so in this post i will try to give you some information about it.

By the defenition, Asperger syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) considered to be on the “high functioning” end of the spectrum. Affected children and adults have difficulty with social interactions and exhibit a restricted range of interests and/or repetitive behaviors. Motor development may be delayed, leading to clumsiness or uncoordinated motor movements. Compared with those affected by other forms of ASD, however, those with Asperger syndrome do not have significant delays or difficulties in language or cognitive development. Some even demonstrate precocious vocabulary – often in a highly specialized field of interest.

The following behaviors are often associated with Asperger syndrome. However, they are seldom all present in any one individual and vary widely in degree:
• "robotic" or repetitive speech
• challenges with nonverbal communication (gestures, facial expression, etc.) coupled with average to above average verbal skills
• tendency to discuss self rather than others
• inability to understand social/emotional issues or nonliteral phrases
• lack of eye contact or reciprocal conversation
• obsession with specific, often unusual, topics
• one-sided conversations
• awkward movements and/or mannerisms

• limited or inappropriate social interactions

In my conclusion i would like to say that people who has "Aspergher Syndrome" absolutely the same as all other people, and i think that no one should discriminate them. In other words, i think that we shouldn't point on them or anything else, they are also normal as us.

At the end of the post i want you to watch YouTube video about Asperger's Syndrome, which will be useful for your knowledge.

Importance of developing good work habits.

Your ability to develop good work habits for what you do, is to determine “how much you earn”, “how effective you are”, “how much you are respect in your organization”, and “how much real satisfaction you get out of your job/university “.

Unfortunately most people are poor workers, they are not own organized, they are not focused and easily distracted. They work at about 50 percent of capacity. Sadly enough they don't even seem to know how to work any differently and this is a big problem today. Even if they wanted to, it's like speaking in a foreign language, they would not know how to do it without first being taught. How to achieve success in every area of your life? What you have to do is that, you have to develop the habits of highly successful and hard working people. To begin with the Foundation said: “good work habits can be summarized into words: focus and concentration”. Now focus requires clarity concerning the desired results and the relative priority each step that you need to take to achieve those results. When you think a focused think up a photographer adjusting his lands to keep the key subjects sharp in the center the picture. To become a truly hard working individual at work you must be continually adjusting your lands to be sure that what you're working on is the most important thing you could be doing at the moment, to achieve your most important goal.

Successful people understand that the worst waste of time is doing something very well that need not be done at all. Concentration requires the ability to stay with the task until it's 100 percent complete. Successful people understand that they must work in a straight line to get from where they are to where they want to go without diversion or distraction. If you want to accomplish your goals you must be sure that everything you do is taking you in that direction, and then develop good habits to get you there. This decision alone will dramatically increase the quality and quantity, of what you get done every day, and soon enough you will be cut what are the most successful people in your field. Now there are several benefits from learning how to concentrate: first important task completion is a source energy and enthusiasm and self-esteem, on the other hand failure to complete important tasks or to complete them only partially, is not only a major source of stress, but it deeply energy and your enthusiasm and your self-esteem.

When you complete an important task, you experience a surge in energy and well being, but when you work on unimportant task, even if you completed it in time, you get no feeling of satisfaction or personal reward at all, there's no payoff for completing low-level tasks.

Disciplining yourself to concentrate on a job until it is finished gives you a feeling of confidence and competence, and mastery. It develops you into a hard working person and it gives you an experience that self-control, so that you feel that you're in charge of your own destiny.

To write this post i used some information from YouTube video made by Brian Tracy , which you can also find in the first post below.

To finish this post, i would like you to watch a short video about "good habits and morning rituals"