It is a treat time for Compassites. After the talk treat from Jnan Dash on the future of IT we got the treat from Rajesh Setty couple of days back. Now it was time for learning some soft skills. Rajesh spoke on the seven habits one has to cultivate to become an effective software engineer. It was an inspiring talk that made all of us think and was a checklist to constantly evaluate. Though it was targeted for software engineers with details around the project-client lifecycle, these points are very much valid for any person belonging to any industry. Here is a summary of those seven points.

1. Exceed expectations - Expectations are there around always. There are expectations from your boss, expectations from your peers, expectations from family members, expectations from friends and so on. People expect and expect more. Before you can meet expectations you need to validate whether you understand if those expectations are right. Otherwise it is your duty to make sure that people expect right things out of you. It is always easy to meet others expectation if you know how to exceed the expectation. Keeping up promises is one important aspect that people rightfully expect. When you constantly exceed expectation a trust automatically gets established and trust is an important factor that can strengthen the relationship.
2. Individually set higher standards - Benchmarking and raising the bar always pushes you ahead. More than someone setting a target it is very important that you set a target for yourself and keep pushing it as and when you meet it. This trait complements point 1 and helps in exceeding expectations.
3. Influencing the influencers - Being an influencer is a skill of its own and requires tremendous talent and is not an easy task. But if you become one then it’s like having people who will blindly follow your advice. Suppose Ram is a great influencer of Shyam. Shyam’s decisions most of the time will be greatly influenced by the advice Ram gives to him. If you know to influence Ram then you have a chance to indirectly get Shyam’s green signal on things that he expects from you and takes the advice on it from Ram.
4. Expect recognition for result and not effort - This is a fantastic point and I loved it. Most common cause for a lot of frustrations and de-motivation is not realizing this point. You might have burnt the midnight oil to complete a task. But ultimately it is the result that matters to the person who is expecting this task to be completed. He/She does not care how you complete it or what difficulties it took you to complete it. But if you have completed the task and give the expected result then you have the right to expect recognition. But again you might sometimes get that recognition and sometimes not in which case you have to keep moving on.
5. Keep promises that you make to yourself - A valid point that a lot of us don’t do because there is no accountability as most of the times no one knows that you have promised yourself in the first place. Even otherwise it is so easy to find a reason for not keeping it up but if you think about it you definitely know that it was a stupid reason.
6. Package information for easy consumption - When someone is expecting something out of you, all he/she wants to know is exactly what he/she wants to know. So it is important to highlight and group relevant information in the right sense and give it in a way that the person expecting it can consume it with minimal effort and time.
7. Focus on Return on Investment for an Interaction - ROII - Rajesh’s trademark term. Search for ROII on his blog and you will find enough on it.

The one hour session was very inspiring and intuitive. We are very fortunate to have Rajesh part of Compassites board and we are hungry for more talks from him and look forward for his next visit.

Rajesh’s book “Beyond Code - Learn to distinguish yourself in 9 simple steps” is now available in India. You can buy it online from gobookshopping or itbytebooks.

Checkout Chennai’ites, Rajesh is going to give a talk in India’s biggest bloggers unconference on September 9th and 10th.