Most successful people are abrupt, arrogant and unhappy

Expert finds need to empower leadership and employees

 

BPW Cyprus and the European Parliament office in Nicosia recently hosted the distinguished corporate trainer Ioannis Kalogerakis at a special seminar held at the Hilton Cyprus.

He addressed a crowd of 300 mainly female executives on “Divergence in leadership – responsibilities of both sexes” at an event where two special awards were also handed to Female Entrepreneur and Female Professional for 2006.

Prior to the public event, Dr. Kalogerakis, the Managing Director of JMK Anthropocentric Corporate Training and a former professor at the Metsovio Polytechnic, also made similar-themed corporate training presentations to Marfin Laiki sales staff, teachers at Pascal Institute and Zorpas management and staff in Limassol.

In all his seminars, Kalogerakis gave out the same message, although varied at each presentation to accommodate the different profile of each crowd:

“Holding a management degree does not mean you are good in that field or even an expert.”

Having been in the retail and trade business for 25 years, Kalogerakis said that he met many people who took their time or worked at their own pace.

He told the Financial Mirror in an interview that he later got involved in psychology, subsequently ending up in the area of “empowerment”. His firm, JMK, focuses on empowering all levels of management and staff to strive towards higher goals.

Dr Kalogerakis started his empowerment workshops in Cyprus in 1999 in cooperation with RAI Consultants where he worked for five years. He then moved on to Pascal where he was teaching the teachers to be leaders in the classroom.

One of his recent talks in Cyprus was about relations at work. He said that men do not have intuition, they do not build good relationships, but women do.

In the case of his workshop to Zorpas employees, he started from the directors and moved downwards to mid-management and then to the lower level of employees who run the store operations.

Another talk was to the third annual sales conference for Marfin Laiki Bank to empower their sales team.

“I work with the state of mind, and feelings, not to retool or retrain people in their field of expertise. I show a movie trailer and pick a catch word or phrase and elaborate on that feeling or expression to empower the crowd.”

In the case of Pascal, “I empower the teachers to become leaders in the classroom and not limit themselves to the pedagogical part of their training.”

Why teach empowerment to teachers?

“Young children in the classroom can be just as intimidating, which is why you need leadership skills, while some executives in their 60s and 70s are as childish,” Kalogerakis said.

“I do not deal with politicians as they cannot tell all of the truth all of the time, but I help those who aim for the kerdos, to gain or earn as much as possible from their work.”

“I go where there are people, to large companies that lose their friendly face and warmth, such as banks, and to small companies that were successful and subsequently grew their business and again lost their character.” These travels take him across Greece, the Middle East, Israel and the Balkans.

However, there is also a ‘dark side’ of employers and employees, which is why Kalogerakis also deals with anger management.

“We all have something hidden, we all have a good and a bad side, you cannot remove the bad (side) but you can empower the good to let it come out.”

The secret to success at work is simple, according to Kalogerakis: “One must be able to combine professional success with happiness in life. The way to happiness is freedom from any guilt.”

“Man is the same whether he is at home or at work, so why can’t he behave that way?”

He said that the majority of successful people are abrupt, arrogant, not concerned whether he is happy or respected. The minority are the ethical leaders.

“People do not change, but they can choose,” said Kalogerakis, explaining that sustaining a positive attitude requires a lot of hard work. “I can help a good man find values and principles.”

Comparing Cypriot executives with business leaders overseas, Kalogerakis said that Cyprus ranks very low in the standings of the top countries, but is very high among the bottom-rated countries of the Balkans and some in the rest of Europe.

“I have been doing this business in Cyprus for the past ten years, having first discovered Cyprus through the trade business in 1988 selling industrial goods. But I know there is an unbelievable potential,” he said.

“In many parts of the world I found that Cypriots and Greeks dominate the universities — where are the German professors, the Portuguese, the Italians in such institutions.

“I am from Crete, where I think there are many similarities to Cyprus. So, is it a DNA thing?”

In looking at the positive values of Cypriots, Kalogerakis referred to some unique words that best describe the Cypriot character: filoxenia (hospitality), kopiaste (welcome) and elate (come on in).

Cypriots, just like many other Mediterranean nations, are warm people. “We don’t embrace the formal, but we mean it. Many other people are professional but distant with no feelings.”

Kalogerakis always ends his lectures by focusing on three Greek words he heard from another international trainer of emotional intelligence, Steven Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

“To develop as a society or professional individual you need three things, a model I too have adopted and adapted.

“Ethos – without it we will reach a dead end. Ethical people seek other ethical people. Crooks too seek out ethical people as they cannot trust a fellow crook.

“Pathos (passion) – without which we cannot enthuse, wake up or awaken others.

“Filotimo – love of honour. This is a word found only in Greek. From that I have elaborated on the friend-ship, citizen-ship, leader-ship and now I deal with employ-ship.”