Watermelon Effect in Organizations (HR perspective)

Watermelon Effect – now fruits have also forayed in Human Resource. What an Irony!!!

How does it feel, when I start this article with a fruit name – let me guess – many of you may feel this irrelevant and would like to scrap this out right away and some may also curse the writer but won’t do it publicly– as it’s a professional platform. Right?

Do you feel like RED inside and GREEN outside in your workplace?

Is it burning inside you RED- HOT with anger and still you have to keep your calm at the workplace?

Do you feel the need to improve such situations but feel stranded at times?

It’s an abrupt concern which is present within ourselves for thousands and thousands of years, yet un-conquered and its time that every leader/manager must address to improve their team results and individual results, in-fact ultimately the organizational result.

Wherever we go on the social platform – we have “like” buttons – be it Facebook or Twitter, no such platform has ever given a dislike button. Irony again…

We as humans fear the word “dislike”- we fear rejections. Since childhood, our parents are making us run towards being the BEST. We are given no option of being GOOD. That’s the reason we have become reluctant enough to go ahead to accept failures.

The so-called HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. Hence we end up being WATERMELONS in this society. Fully Red inside and Green outside for the world…helpless creatures.

This is a very common concern faced by all. Same happens with us at the organizational levels, where we as managers may only pass on positive feedback to our subordinates while the improvement areas are hardly shared with a fear of being misunderstood or being hurt/initiating demotivation and etc. etc. As Managers, we presume that merely sharing positive thoughts would keep the workforce motivated. We should be thinking as Leaders where the improvement areas should also be discussed and vice-versa – upward communication.

Areas to be thought of and would help us curb from being Water-melons:

1. OPEN COMMUNICATION – Always keep clear communication with everyone – whether be it customers/ clients or our internal customers – “the Employees”. Give your employees real-time feedback, not as managers rather as a Coach and create improvement paths for them. Therefore that room or thought of negativity gets vanished. We all face such situations where we are not happy with the performance or work behavior of our subordinates.
   What should we do – should we fear the thought of being honest and HURT them or demotivate them? True Leaders find out ways to motivate their employees/colleagues in a positive way and make them realize the flaws. Continuous improvement is the way to success and so sharing thoughts to each is very important. And also the leaders should give room to their subordinates/ colleagues enough space to share their concerns. An OPEN and TWO-WAY Communications is the path to eradicate this Watermelon syndrome.
2. ACCEPTING FAILURES – True Leaders should be the torch-bearers for their subordinates in terms of setting examples. We all fail and should learn to accept those downfalls and should be able to learn from the gaps. Use those gap as learnings in building our professional character more strong. What happens in real scenarios we Managers/ Leaders ourselves are mentally weak creatures and as a result of which we tend to pass on the same traits to our successors. Instead, if we should prepare ourselves to turn the table around make the best use of such fallouts. We as Managers/ Leaders should be able to build such rapport with our colleagues that the platform becomes the start point of improvements and feedbacks are taken as helping notes. A helipad for them to fly with Success.

3. Cultivate the Eagerness to Learn and TEAM BUILDING – We all work in teams and for all of us to succeed it would be our teamwork and each individual’s individual performance. Achieving organizational goals alone is not possible, so we much cultivate the eagerness to work in teams and learn from each other and grow towards personal & organizational advancements. This eradicates the negative effect of being hurt or any other malicious reactions. NEVER STOP LEARNING and feedbacks add flavor to our learning efforts.

4. Be a GUIDING Light – Leaders / Managers should always have an approach of friendship and a helping hand of a teacher. An employee/ subordinate should be made to understand their wrongs are not taken in a good note rather there is always a helping hand to pull you from that wrong path to the right path. Managers should sculpt such paths for their followers, which leads to the improvement of their performances. Our ultimate aim is the fulfillment of the organizational goals.
5. Build the TRUST and Comfort Zone – MENTORS BONDING– Once you become the path shower then that comfort zone is cultivated slowly and steadily among the team members and you will find the toughest situations can be achieved by little efforts of sharing thoughts among the team members. Give your teammate the extra TRUST that even if they fail you are there to support them. Once you give them that extra faith and independence they will be ready to fight any war and even win it for you. They would start taking challenging jobs on their own and you would also outshine as an effective manager.

There are many things in the world which can be achieved by simply being simple rather than complicating it. Instead of getting angry on the poor performances of your teammates or unacceptable behavior of your junior, and on top of it just keeping it inside and showing others ways to show your unacceptance is something really foolish in today’s world. Workout ways to clear your thoughts, have regular feedback sessions with them and always look for collectively achieving your organizational goals.

So KISS – KEEP IT SOFT (YOUR SOFTSKILLS) and SIMPLE, let the Watermelons to fade away and create ACHIEVERS with the points discussed above for your organization.

Happy Reading!!!

Do share your own watermelon thoughts. 🙂

Keep Smiling !!

Thanks for reading this article.