Good Emotional Intelligence check

My hands were shivering and heart thudding against my chest as I realized I was being shouted at... in front of the entire team.

Apparently I had pissed off my colleague by disregarding what he said and checking with his senior for details. And in my eyes it was just a confirmation before I go through the implementation from an engineering perspective. What I saw as well intended requirements understanding turned out to be a blow to his ego... I had around 4 years experience in the corporate world and was still developing an understanding of dealing with human ego :)

Anyway coming back to point of this blog, I sat staring at this person yelling at me. Frozen to the spot, I could not think of what to say at his outburst. Of course, at hindsight I can think of tons of colorful ways to defend and offend. However I was not planning on a retort as I just sat there humiliated by the scene created with me in center stage,

Out of nowhere came my tech lead in shining armor saying, "no raised voices in office and let us discuss as adults". This support was enough to jolt me back to action. I willingly led the way to a room where we could discuss next steps and any remedy needed.

Even now, when unnatural yelling at corporate offices are witnessed I am glad to quote "no raised voices" and rescue the juniors. In fact, what has helped me remember this incident was while leaving yahoo the same colleague mentioned I had a high emotional quotient based on how I handled his yelling... little did he know how I was having a nervous breakdown while putting up a brave front.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Back to Corporate

 Great to be back after a vacation that always feels short and hectic :)  Anyway, here is the update that I had promised after I get back and here it is - I have decided to move back to the corporate world after a brief stint at the start up world.. which btw if fascinating.. So why don't we come up with a list of how both these environments score against certain parameters... as I have been asked upteen number of times, how it is working for a startup and what is different, etc. Category Startup Environment Corporate world Customer Interaction I loved that I got to talk to customers ALL the time. Got constant feedback and really understood customer problems It was not easy to reach the customers admist multiple layers, and mostly problems were assumptions, and feedback non-existent Team work Everyone is vested, and being small team really helps bond Existed in pockets and I have some great teams in most companies Product Being close to customer, we delivered exactly what th...
Read more

Career journey so far..

  As I look back at my career, or discuss with anyone about my vast experience - one of the questions I get is "Soo many changes/ Companies?" I thought it would be a good idea to address this.. Initially this post was a list of pointers to remind me of the rich journey and experience gained from my last 20 years in the corporate world. Typical human nature, we tend to remember the negative experiences so I wanted to create this reminder for all the wonderful memories I have created in the past 2 decades! HP Labs - In the spirit of starting from the very beginning, HP Labs was the reason I moved to Bangalore and got a taste of corporate life. Thanks to wonderful mentors like SriGanesh, Ajay, and other wonderful PS mates (Ash, Naj, Dabba, Ramya, Prabhu..). I got exposed to AI - handwriting recognition, multi-model interfaces! All big words for a 20 year old me :)  Dell (1st Innings)  -  For all practical purposes, Dell is where I learnt my trade and a lot of things abo...
Read more

Magical GenAI world in a startup setting

After decades of working in a corporate setting, honestly startup atmosphere was a shock! And the smallest company I had worked was a family owned food business with branches in over 2 states in the US... and boasting of a customer base across 10 states in US! (Anyway that is for another blog) However, I would like to talk about GenAI first and there is only one word to describe it - Magical. Of course, much before the startup stint I had started using chatGPT. I have used it for any email and even my farewell emails... It showed more empathy and sympathy than I ever could. When I joined Alltius and started using chatGPT "officially", I was amazed what little changes with prompt engineering basic skills you could accomplish in GenAI... I could never tire of the constant back and forth, experimentation to get chatGPT to "behave" :)  Alltius boasts of high accuracy and zero hallucination, thanks to our dogged testing and determination to provide the correct answers ba...
Read more