Article:
Attitude towards your work and choices can often decide the course of your career. Your morale plays a pivotal role in building attitude and dictates personal preferences. This brings us to an interesting study, pondering deeper into how morals and personal preferences influence one’s career or professional life per se.
Personal preferences and morals are not the same thing. While these are interdependent, which should we tame for better personality and professional success?
'Personal preferences’ are the individual inclinations or likes and dislikes unique to each person. They are influenced by upbringing, individual and familial culture, monochromatic experiences of the immediate world, and values. These preferences can play a significant role in shaping one's choices and decisions.
‘Morals’ refer to the principles or standards of right and wrong behavior that guide a person's actions and decisions. Morals are often deeply rooted in an individual's inherited belief system and can be influenced by cultural, religious, and philosophical factors. However, they are established alone, by one’s inner voices, their core spiritual being, and how one chooses to connect with self, therefore, project themselves to the world.
In a candid conversation, Mr. Arnab Sengupta elaborated on ‘morals’ and ‘personal preferences’, their interrelation, and how they influence a professional. Mr. Sengupta is a professor of Fashion Design at Amity University, and Fashion Director and Brand Consultant at IRIS Clothing & Apparel.
While these are interdependent, which one should we tame for better personality and professional success?
Personal preferences, as well as morals, are similar. However, where do these two come from? We have to find the root cause of it. Where do these morals come from? It is the immediate environment of a person that helps him or her shape morals. Maybe it’s the family or the friend circle he or she is brought up with, maybe a particular community where he or she is staying. So, all these things help a person to build up his or her morale. That is what happens. Then, from morals comes personal preferences. When you have a moral, you can automatically have your personal preferences. So, morality is essential when you aspire to have a great career. That’s what keeps you going throughout your life.
Returning to morals, many things that help us shape our lives are essential, like punctuality. If you are not punctual and not acting immediately, for a particular reason, if you are delaying your achievement. The upbringing, morals or behavior of a person helps that person in the future when he or she starts working. When he or she is working in a corporate house or an organization, they need to stick to a deadline. It totally depends on the moral of the person, whether he or she is taking that particular project, work, or assignment seriously or not. A person who is successful in life doesn’t procrastinate. If you want to count success in your life, you should not delay at any time. You should act immediately on that particular assignment or subject or anything you might be working on. That helps you to achieve success in your life.
Success doesn’t come just like that; it comes out of a lot of hard work and dedication. So those people who are dedicated in their life, have profound morale and solid upbringing, would be able to perform well in their lives and ultimately become successful. So, you might see that, if you consider two students from the same college or institution, they are passing out, maybe the same course; one is doing very well academically while the other one is not (academically). If we try to find the reason behind it, we’ll always see that one who became successful is very serious and has taken all the assignments and subjects very seriously from day one, but the other person has not. All of these boil down to the person’s morale, which that starts from his or her childhood.
When a child is born and brought up in a certain environment where he or she has been groomed well, made to understand that if they don’t take any particular thing seriously, then they will be lagging in their subject or whatever assignments they are doing. So, I think that personal choice happens at a later stage. It is the moral that will help him or her to grow in the future and to be a wonderfully successful professional.
The choices that we make in our lives are just out of wisdom. Whenever a person is working in a particular place, environment, organization, or institution, after working for a couple of years, he or she has the wisdom to choose what is good for him or her or what is not. That comes out of wisdom; it also comes out of experience.
You mentioned two students were exposed to the same environment – the same institution, curriculum, teachers, and almost the same nurturing environment. One ends up as a disciplined person, while another doesn’t. Often, disciplined and meritorious students are also bullied. Don’t you think such undesirable and unfair treatments may discourage them? How would you suggest they remain unaffected by such behaviors?
They are also called “nerds.”
Bullying happens for being very studious because the person is not active with the other segments of the institutions. If you are studying in an institution, there are studies or academic curricula and other activities that help the students grow. I will give you an example. I am teaching fashion at a university right now, and besides a vast curriculum (academic) to follow, we also have clubs – fashion, music, journalism, story-telling, literature, and photography clubs - and each has its activities. Even if you are a very good student, if you are very serious about your studies, you must be a part of club activities because those club activities are essential for a students’ growth and development. Those club activities help you present yourself in front of society, and give demonstrations and presentations. These can help open various avenues for you when you start working professionally. That helps to open up a person. I have seen so many people and students who are academically very good but lag in communication.
I have heard from one of my elder sisters (an HR in IBM) that Calcutta has so many outstanding students. They are exceptionally academically well, and their marks are much better than those of Delhi and Mumbai candidates. Still, whenever they appear for an interview, they are unable to speak a single word. They are unable to speak a single sentence correctly, and unable to present them properly. So, I think it should be a holistic exposure. Any institutional organization should provide holistic exposure to the students so that they can build their academic profile and personality because personality plays a very important role.
Whenever a person is going to work in any organization or institution, that person’s personality will be of great importance. If he or she is unable to present himself or herself, deliver a speech, or unable to convince colleagues, then he or she will not be able to work in any particular office for a longer time. He or she might get bullied in the organization where he or she works. That’s why building up a holistic environment in an institution is crucial.
Being academically well is very good, but at the same time, you need to develop your personality. You must have several other qualities to present yourself and have certain managerial skills. Thus, you can convince a group of people you are sitting with, and your work becomes easier in such an environment.
Professionals often have a hard time coping with their personal preferences and morals in the corporate environment, where they are sometimes expected to compromise with their morals. Individuals who don’t do that are often seen as inflexible and incompatible with a corporate environment. Do you think sticking to one’s morals and preferences becomes one’s weakness instead of strength?
You also need to have a lot of wisdom. Of course, you should have high morals, but at the same time, you must have a certain amount of managerial qualities. That’s very important. For example, I have a couple of colleagues, and one or two have very high morals; they would not listen to any student. If any student comes late, he or she will be marked absent. He will not consider the one who arrived late to be present on that particular day. Nowadays, institutions also have feedback forms for students. They can also share their feedback about the teachers with the institutions. The teachers often get very poor feedback from the students. I am not saying that it is suitable for the students to come late every day, but there is a lot of scope in how you can handle the situation.
A teacher is not someone who will just come and teach and leave the class; a teacher is supposed to groom the students so that if not 100 percent, at least 70-80 percent of the students will be able to perform extremely well in their lives.
The immediate academic result is not the ultimate thing; what’s important is what they are going to do in their lives. Are you able to inspire the students for the future? Students try to avoid extremely strict teachers. So, it is the managerial quality of the faculty, the professor, and the teacher to inspire the students who are coming late. That kind of managerial or counseling quality is what a teacher must have.
Talking about compromising and discounting morals is unacceptable, but your morals should not be that strict, which may hamper your career. We all need to be flexible in our lives; you cannot be high on morals that end up creating blockers for yourself. That should not happen. You should be a little flexible but without harming anybody and not take any undue advantage of anybody. Of course, not spoiling anybody’s career or life. These three things are very important, according to me. Apart from that, you should be a little bit flexible in coping with a particular situation because every day is a new situation for us.
Currently, organizations prioritize skills and this is reflected in their hiring as well. Most hiring is based on skill sets instead of degrees.
Absolutely, people who are not flexible will stagnate. You need to improve with time, be cautious, be aware of what’s happening around you, and be flexible. That’s what I feel; when you are flexible you can grow because the world is not constant. Everyone is growing every day; it is continuously changing every day. Similarly, you also need to change with time. It is very important.
How would you define skills for aspiring professionals?
I think skill is something that we carry throughout our lives, that’s what I think. You know skill is something you learn that will stay with you throughout your life and is like a treasure to you. So, learning new skills is again an essential thing. You need to learn new skills every day. Next, what you have learned you must capitalize on in the future. Skill plays a vital role in a professional’s life.
Skill can be of various kinds – a skill in your vocabulary, presentation, or managerial skills. These skills need to be learned every day because it is a continuous process. It is not one skill I have learned, and I am going to continue with this skill throughout my life; it’s never going to happen because we are continuously innovating; we are coming up with new environments every time. So, your past skills may not help in a particular environment. So, you need to learn every time. First of all, you need to be an excellent observer, watch things, and learn from that also, and thereby, with your skill set, you can solve a problem, win a particular situation, and encourage your surroundings with your skills.
Skills play a crucial role in a professional’s life, and that is not only one or two skills. If you think you have learned some skills in college and you are going to continue with them throughout your life, then that is not going to happen. Acquiring new skills is a continuous process. It’s learning, and I am still learning every day from everything – social media, my students, and the people I am interacting with, which are very important. We need to keep learning and keep our minds open to learn a lot of things.
What are the five things that you would like the students, aspiring and practicing professionals to have on their desks, keep highlighted, or remember always? What are those five super important things to always refer to and follow throughout their lives?
First of all, I think you need to have a set of rules made for your own life. This is very important. You must act immediately; a person who acts immediately to any situation, problem, or whatever he or she is working on, that person needs to work immediately. It is the first good quality of a professional. If you act immediately, you are going to get results. The results might not be immediate but will reflect at the right time when you need them the most. So, you need to act immediately in any kind of situation.
Acting immediately starts with research; it helps you to know, based on which you will act. If you act on any particular situation without research or its knowledge, then it is not going to work. Research is the factor that differentiates an unsuccessful, averagely successful, and very successful venture.
The second thing is that whatever you start, you must be able to end it. The consequences might go for you or against you, but you should be able to complete the entire thing. You should be responsible enough to understand that you have taken responsibility and can solve it. You should be there until the end of the project or whatever things you are doing in your life.
Next, planning is something, and implementing is something else. We plan a lot of things daily but there are many differences between planning, implementation, and execution. We should be wise enough to plan certain things that we can implement. If you know your limitations and can assess yourself very well, you should be able to apply them in your life, too.
The fourth is that when we face challenges, we tend to give up on that particular thing. It is very easy to give up but very difficult to endure that particular situation. Once you go through such challenges, you have learned a lesson. If any such kind of situation arises in your life in the future, you will be able to overcome it. So, you must never give up but endure and try to overcome it. Learn the entire process of taking up the challenge and overcoming it.
The fifth point is that your professional success completely depends on the success of the rest of the people around you; you alone cannot be successful. It is not possible. If you really want to be successful, you must nurture the people around you. If you are heading an organization, you need to nurture the immediate people around you so that they also become successful. When they become successful, you will also automatically be successful. When the others are also performing equally well, your success will also count; that’s leadership quality.
As morale and personal preferences shape up, you can feed your mind the things that can develop progressive morale and thus help you to make the suitable choices that can create a rewarding and fulfilling professional life.
Content Disclaimar
In a candid conversation, Mr. Arnab Sengupta elaborated on ‘morals’ and ‘personal preferences’, their interrelation, and how they influence a professional. Mr. Sengupta is a professor of Fashion Design at Amity University, and Fashion Director and Brand Consultant at IRIS Clothing & Apparel.