Deal With Diplomacy

When I skimmed through the editorial in the newspaper, I glanced this word called “DIPLOMACY”; the writer repeatedly used this word to stress on “something” between India and Pakistan. This word was used a plethora of times in the article, so I decided to find the exact meaning of it .When I browsed through the dictionary, there were two meanings pertaining to diplomacy, one is “activity of managing relationship between two countries and skill in doing this” and the second one which caught my attention was “skill in dealing with people in difficult situations without upsetting or offending them”. Once I comprehended the latter ,the former looked a trivial information to me because this was the one I looked for to describe my job at its best, this is what every manager would do while dealing difficult situations and the quality that a HR person would seek for a manager for his or her firm.
  In today’s scenario with IT boom world, many professionals are engaged in their job with computers, hardly finding time to confront situations or problems that are caused by human nature .Of course there are levels such as Team leader, Project manager and so on….but still the opportunities to show their diplomatic skills are rather less when compared to a manufacturing guy whose primary job is to handle people. Many of my friends got placed in IT sector soon after their graduation, though their primary education was mechanical. But to a gifted person (or a poor soul -according to my friends) like me who started the work as a production engineer, unlike my contemporaries who work in IT, worked as a manager handling five different areas in the shop floor and forty five odd people under my belt with an average age of forty two which was twice that of mine, having experience that equaled to my age that too in the same company. Production engineer is responsible for all the areas under his control, all the goals that the management would give and the safety of the operators. I was given a task of producing twelve lakhs worth products a day. It was a new experience for me, as I have come out fresh from seventeen years of education, right from my kinder garden to my graduation. All I knew were ideal situations with theoretical solutions supported by practical experiments. For example ,If I had been asked a question, in my production papers ,that what are all the possible causes for the production line stoppage, I would write stories like some technical problems in production line ,material unavailability , quality problems and so on. Who would have imagined as if there was a production line stoppage for serving bad tea and late arrival of rice cakes (idllies) in the canteen and so the operators stopped the line producing worth of twelve lacks per day. Funny isn’t it. But that is what really happened during my reign. Or if I had been  asked for any production increase, I would use the equations of time and work and easily do the paper work but when it comes to implementation it is not as easy as you think because it not only involves you but also the operators who work under you. Though you facilitate the production with some latest technologies and make ease their industrious work, they would still find faults and will not co-operate with the production increase. I would reckon that the hardest thing in the world is to change a man’s mind from his age-long practices. There comes your skill of persuasion and that is where your meetings work and mind it these things will not be taught in your engineering courses. As a manager, you will face lot of problems and will be responsible to solve each and every problem that you encounter, after all that is why you are paid and you cannot bail out of the situation expecting serendipity.
The problems we confront are much bigger than the bugging and de-bugging that we confront with computers and all we need to do is to approach the problems pragmatically. I remember one of the weird problems I faced, when my boss heavily fired me for not utilising my resources (operators) properly as they were loitering around the shop floor and gossiping around the corridors. For the first time I lost my temper and in turn showed the same heat to my subordinates .I upbraided them and asked them if they have a brain. Though I was known as a cool headed person, my reaction at that time came on the spur of the moment purely emotional and led to a controversy and commotion, when twenty odd people clouded me and almost flayed( criticized) me asking a reason for my action. I appologised immediately before the situation became an apple of discord. The thing that I learnt from the happening was not to take any thing to the heart that too when you are in a corporate world. After all you do your work and there is no point of being vindictive. So to deal with diplomacy, the prerequisite is patience.
Though these are my own ideas about diplomacy, I will not say that the concept of diplomacy always works well. At times your decisions may not be pleasing and convincing for all, but still you have to take it irrespective of whether it is right or wrong. Of course you cannot expect diplomacy when you are a soldier fighting against your enemies in the battlefield or you don’t want diplomacy like the one between Pakistan and SWAT valley Taliban. The best example of a consummate diplomat is the Indian politician who jumps from one party to another. 

All that we mean with diplomacy is a Win-Win situation. In today’s business scenario no one is your foe, every one is seen as a lucrative asset. So all the negotiations, persuasions etc. are all centered on profitable conclusions and to clinch mutually rewarding accord.