The other day I had a sudden realization about the importance of emotion and logic.  When I was managing a small computer support service provider, I would work closely with specialized technicians, programmers, integrators, accounting personnel, legal professionals, medical directors, and the obvious internal staffing of my company. Over the handful of years, I’d found it to be challenging to find people that had “the balance” of emotional and logical skill set in which I thought to be a “common sense standard”.  With the above established, I decided to put together the following blurb of research that I’ve recently developed:

A generalized overview with the expansion of the Internet and the resulting globalization of business activity, the capacity of the influence of information technology (now referenced as IT) has increased significantly. Many innovative business practices are being enabled specifically by IT. The capacity for integration of information in alpha/numeric, text, voice, and video form will give rise to an even greater abundance and impact of IT in the future. Also, the information systems (now referenced as IS) development profession has been maturing and IS has been recognized as a socio-technical endeavor for some time. For system developers, the need to communicate effectively with users and team members has been increased significantly.

A survey taken in 1993 of 192 human resource personnel responsible for hiring new IS graduates in the Denver, Colorado area discovered that, in addition to knowledge in applied computing and business, it was very important that a new IS hire be educated in: 1) the ability to learn, 2) the ability to work in teams, 3) oral and written communication, 4) problem solving and reasoning, and 5) a point of reference to health and wellness. In short, adaptability, communication, and stress management are seen as key skills for the IS professional. Yet, such skills are not developed through logic alone, but involve the “soft areas” of feelings, instinct, and senses.

A little over 25 years ago, there were two researchers, Couger and Zawacki, who  reported that, while IS professionals (systems analysts and programmers) had the lowest needs for social interaction on the job, they reported much higher “growth needs” than the other professionals surveyed. While at the time, growth needs were largely understood as greater development of professional proficiencies, there now appears to be some evidence that the IS development profession may be ready for a more holistic approach to growth.

For example, a management scientist, in his book on IS management, has called for extending Maslow’s hierarchy of needs beyond self-actualization to “self-donation” and has provided a concrete example of such a stage in the career of a systems analyst. An article in Computerworld has called for “emotional literacy among IS professionals” in the context of personality awareness. There was a convention of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS), where a keynote speaker proposed that “love” and not confrontation be the model for organizational communication, and received a standing ovation. A job advertisement for IT professionals within an insurance company in a prominent U.S. software center points out that this employer is interested in contributing to the employee’s professional and personal life, and advises candidates to “listen to their inner voice.” A prominent U.S. textbook author has referred, in the dedication of his text on IS for the Internetworked Enterprise to “experiencing the Light within.” In a recent Canadian survey on stress among IS professionals, the most frequently mentioned desired coping resource was “personal development seminars,” closely followed by “conflict resolution seminars.”

Also, the concept of “emotional intelligence” is being increasingly emphasized in management literature. It is being recognized that, while the traditional IQ (intelligence quotient) can help a person to get a job, it is the EQ (emotional quotient) that will allow the person to keep the job and to progress satisfactorily in his/her career.

Thus, the stage appears to be set for a preliminary attempt to address specific psychological factors as applied to the work of various IT professionals such as system and data analysts, programmers, project managers, help desk personnel, and also software engineers, telecommunications designers, and others. In this context, the term IT is considered to include a broader range of positions, whereas IS is more restricted to the activities of planning, analysis, design, development, and deployment of computerized business application systems.

Here is an interesting article about some former Google employees leaving to build social networking sites.   This was found on the Mashable and it offers an insight into the importance of building your brand or products community.  This continues to be the secret success for online companies as well as traditional companies.  As Seth Godin describes in his book Tribes, once you have a loyal “Tribe” following you and your product there is nothing you can’t achieve.  But how do you do this?  In my opinion, it starts with being authentic.  Second, have to build trust.  Finally, you have to provide a product or service that can go viral.  Are your customers proud to talk about your product and promote it to their friends and family?  If you can answer yes to all three you are well on your way to having a smashing success on your hands.

Twitter is a messaging service that shares a lot of characteristics with communication tools you already use. It has elements that are similar to email, IM, texting, blogging, RSS, social networks and so forth. But a few factors, particularly in combination, make Twitter unique:

Messages you send and receive on Twitter are no more than 140  characters, or about the length of a news headline. That means they’re really easy to write and read.

Messages on Twitter are public, like blog posts, and you don’t have to give people permission to see what you’ve written. That means you can readily meet new people on Twitter.

The messages are opt-in, and people choose to get a stream of others’ messages. (On
Twitter, this model is called “following.”) That means you have to be interesting, or
people will choose not to get your updates.

You can send and receive the messages via a variety of mechanisms, including mobile
phones, PCs, websites and desktop programs, and they’re distributed in real time. That
means that Twitter can fit with nearly anyone’s workflow.

When you add all that together, and you throw in a dose of the friendliness common on
Twitter today, you get a powerful and appealing communications platform that turns out to
be highly useful for a slew of personal and professional needs.

I had recently chatted with a Recruitment Director for one of the nation’s largest Information Technology firms.  Four months each year she visits college campuses to recruit graduating seniors for her company’s junior executive  training  program.  The tenor of her remarks indicated she was discouraged about the attitudes of many people she talked with.

“Most days I interview between 8 and 12 college seniors, all in the upper third of  their class, all at least mildly  interested in coming with  us.  One of the main things we want to determine in the screening interview is the individual’s motivation. We want to find out if he or she is the kind of person who can, in a few years, direct major projects, manage a branch office, or in some other way make a really substantial contribution to the company.  “I must say I’m not too pleased with the personal objectives of most of those I talk with.  You’d be surprised,” she went on, “how many 22-year-olds are more interested in our retirement plan than in anything else we have to offer.  A second favorite question is ‘Will I move around a lot?’  Most of them seem to define the word success as synonymous with security. Can we risk turning our company over to people like that?  “The thing I can’t understand is why should young people these days be so ultra-conservative,  so narrow in their view of the future? Every day there are more signs of expanding opportunity.

This country is making record progress in scientific and technological development.  Our population is gaining rapidly.  If there ever was a time to be bullish about America, it’s now.”   The tendency for so many people to think small means  there is much less competition than you think for a very rewarding career.

Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family  background;  they are measure by the size of their thinking.  How big do we think determines the size of our accomplishments. Now, let’s see how we can enlarge our thinking.

Ever ask yourself, “What is my greatest weakness?” Probably the greatest human weakness is self-deprecation    that is selling oneself short.  Self-deprecation shows through in countless ways.

John sees a job advertisement in the paper;  it’s exactly what he would like.  But he does nothing about it because he  thinks,  “I’m not good enough for that job, so why bother.” Or Jim wants a date with  Joan, but he doesn’t call her  because he thinks he wouldn’t rate with her.  Tom feels Mr. Richards would be a very good prospect for his product, but Tom doesn’t call. He feels Mr. Richards is too big to see  him.  Pete is filling out a job application form.  One  question asks,  “What  beginning  salary  do  you  expect?”  Pete puts down a modest figure because he feels he really isn’t worth the bigger sum that he would like to earn.

Philosophers for thousands of  years  have  issued  good  advice: Know Thyself. But most people, it seems, interpret this suggestion to  mean Know Only Thy Negative Self. Most self-evaluation consists of making long mental lists of one’s faults, shortcomings, inadequacies.

It’s well to know our inabilities, for this shows us areas in which we can improve. But if we only know our negative characteristics we’re in a mess. Our value is small.