The smell of success!

An aspect of India liberalizing and going global is the availability of exotic perfumes at most shopping malls. What was once easily available only to the foreign returned is now very desi.So much so, you get to smell, a Davidoff or a Burberry more often and even more so as the disposal income of Indian's rises.
The perfume area is my favourite at shopping malls. I stalk the place and sample perfumes at random & end up smelling like a fruit punch.
Interestingly, I get to smell perfume more often at the campus too.Students seem to be quite comfortable dousing themselves with fragrance for a class!
Great, but what's the bad news. One is that, your perfume might have been at the cost of a musk rat or civet cat.More importantly, research has indicated that, male interviewers are not very enamoured of folk turning up for an interview smelling of Calvin Klein................while female interviewers are more accepting and like people smelling like roses.
what could be the reason? Apparently male interviewers think that the candidate is trying to manage an impression or indulging in impression management, while females are more accepting.
The next time, you are due for an interview, try to determine the gender of the interviewer or else leave the bottle of perfume alone, that is if you want the job badly and are prepared to play the game.Success does not necessarily result from smelling good!

What a pain?

A few days ago, I was at my dentist's to have a painful tooth attended to. Having a fairly low threshold of pain I was at my grumpiest. The drill started with a pretty lady Junior dentist first examining my teeth- molar to canine & amidst friendly banter passed me on to a guy with a crew cut & scowl on his face. This gent was brusque,cold & cut me short every time I wanted to say something.

I was pretty annoyed, in fact very annoyed & in order to vent my feelings found the junior lady doctor an appropriate target.I did not spare the male dentist & called him all sorts of names.I also reflected, as to how the guys wife could live with an idiot like that, all the while ignoring the feeble defense of my lady friend and frantic signals from the reception. Eventually satiated, I found a seat to park myself & retreated. After a while the receptionist informed me with a glint in her eye, that the pretty lady dentist & the painful guy were husband & wife. What a horror! The events that followed are too painful to relate here, but the point is that, how could I have been so abysmally low in intellect?

OB Theory will tell you that these kind of people ( me ) are what are called as 'low self monitors' & are notorious for gaffes. Self-monitoring refers to how individuals control and regulate their self-presentation in social situation. High self-monitoring individuals typically act in accordance with the demands of their social setting. They are attuned to the image they project to others, and they are particularly adept at regulating their self-presentation to fit these situational demands. As a result, their behavior may change from situation to situation. In contrast, low self-monitoring individuals rely on their attitudes, beliefs, and values to guide their behavior. Consequently, they are more likely than high self-monitoring individuals to show greater consistency in their behaviors from one situation to the next.

I had a very jovial captain, who could not resist cracking jokes & got demoted because he cracked a joke in a very serious situation!While high self monitors rise higher professionally, there is evidence suggesting that high self-monitors could have difficulty sustaining long-term relationships. With regard to jobs, high self-monitors have lower job commitment and are more likely to quit their jobs than are low self-monitors. In addition, high self-monitors are less committed to their dating relationships and more willing, than low self-monitors, to leave their current romantic partners for others . Finally, high self-monitors are more prone to divorce than are low self-monitors and experience more stress because they are very concious of the impression that they create.

So what are you?

A Tiger in the Circus!

Zeta Interactive, a New York company that monitors message boards, blogs and social media posts, said the buzz around Tiger Woods as measured by its technology became overwhelmingly negative in the past two weeks. His positive rating, once higher than Oprah Winfrey’s, has plummeted. The company’s chief executive, Al DiGuido, said the turnabout was “the quickest fall from positive to negative we’ve ever seen” in the approximately five years his company has measured what computer users are saying. As the Tiger watches his ratings plummet & sponsors, taking him off their boards, he would rue his escapades or should we say sexcapades. From being a role model for kids around the world Tiger Woods, is now associated with sleaze and poor character. The last few months has been a tragicomic series of events for the Tiger as skeletons or should we say damsels of all hues & color tumble out of the proverbial closet.Thus far, amidst the mayhem his wife has held her counsel and maintained a dignified calm. Fortunately for Wood's he has taken good advise & has broken from golf, on what he calls as a sabbatical. Time to put balm on bruised relationships. On this entire circus, I have a few points to make: 1. The arrogance of the man, in thinking that he could get away with the kind of reckless behavior that he was indulging in or was it a severe lack of emotional stability. 2.His idea of impression management which turns out to be abysmal.Maybe fame lowers the levels of inhibition? 3.His sponsors who seem to want to cut him adrift cast him away in a hurry and seem to have little idea, as to how to manage him as a brand, which has gone sour. Amidst all the brouhaha, the only person, who in my opinion, stands out for some kind of integrity is Wood's wife, whose stated concern seems to be her children. Generally, with kind of golfing skills that Tiger Woods has, you would credit him with some intelligence, but I would not bet my last rupee on the contents of his occiput or are our primordial urges so strong that we are ready to throw caution to the winds! During his sabbatical Wood's would be well advised to do some serious introspection on his life and maybe would be better advised to take a few tips from the old charmer Bill Clinton.Bill should know, he got out of the wood's, despite Monica Lewinsky. Watch a cute Tiger ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wHkA_983_s )