The full day session was taken by Mike David. He was brilliant. His voice never lost the pitch, intensity, timbre from 9 in the morning to 6 in the evening. Such enthusiasm is possible only when you love your job which he evidently did.
There were many things I learnt/noticed/observed from the session - some implicit and others explicit. One major thing was that when you love your job you are wonderful! Which posed a question I have been thinking about since. Can you not deliver 100% even when you DO NOT love your job? Do I have to like a thing to be good at it? Maybe there is a middle path - where you can do a thing well even if you don't like it particularly but you have to love it to be outstanding! Life does always seem to end in the middle way.
During our MBA we studied a lot about core values, competencies etc. I used to smile at the idea of an organization having a "core value". But now I realize that some of it is true. One interesting thing Mike said yesterday that for job and family it is important for the relationship that both parties can protect each other's core values. How true! If my spouse is very honest and I am not - it becomes a minefield of conflicts. Same goes for the organization. If the org believes in micro management and you do not - then you are not going to stick at the job.
Another obvious but often overlooked point was - don't promise what you cannot deliver - be it a promotion, hike, project etc. This is something which I had tried to convey to the Airtel people recently. I foolishly asked them to give me a realistic date when my connection would be set up and I would not bug them till that date. As expected, they gave ambitious timelines so that customers would not complain of a long wait time and of course, chaos resulted as they were obviously not able to meet the deadlines. So, be honest and promise what you can deliver.
A very interesting concept was about the work pyramid - ideally we should have 'DO' at the top followed by 'DELEGATE', 'DUMP' and 'DESTROY' in successive order. This means that for a piece of work we should first see whether it is really necessary - if not destroy it. If yes, then is it required right now? Can it be scheduled for a later period? If yes, dump it. If not, then can it be done by my subordinate? Is it possible to delegate it? If yes, then guide your subordinate in doing it. Only if the answer is no, is the work important and urgent enough to be done by you at that moment. What happens in real life is that the pyramid becomes inverted! We end up doing most of the work, delegating a little less, dump even lesser and destroying the least. I realized that delegating and prioritizing is very important esp when you have to groom your subordinate. This idea was reinforced because recently I failed very miserably at delegating. I did not review the work properly, did not give proper feedback and hence the document created more problems. Instead of spending time in correcting mistakes and giving feedback, I simply picked up the doc, stayed late and did it myself. My thinking is still not matured for the next level!
One thing I learnt/observed about myself - I no longer want to meet people just for the sake of it and make small talk. Have I truly changed - I who was an extrovert such that I made friends instantly and with everybody? Funny - I believe that basics do not change - so which is the real me? Tough question!
Taking forward the above thought - I was pretty aloof during tea breaks and not speaking to anyone. I think Mike might have noticed this attitude and he approached me during the evening tea break and asked if I was satisfied with the exercise done just earlier. One thing led to another and the discussion moved to our moving up the value chain. There are two important aspects about getting a promotion - grooming someone else for the job and hence assuring the manager that there would be someone else to do the job equally well. Being good at work will NOT assure your promotion, proving to the boss that someone else will do it equally well is mandatory, otherwise why would he let go of a perfectly good resource! And I am very very lacking in this respect. The second aspect is proving that you can handle the next level work. The boss needs to be sure that you can do the new work well; otherwise it is not a WIN situation for him - he removed you from a position where he was getting good work from you to one where he is not getting anything out of you! I already have feedback that I need to improve in this aspect.
What he spoke was very contextual and maybe that is why I was able to relate better. Also, he did not speak about leadership in abstract - he spoke about a balance between manager and leader.
He had a tough assignment - people there did not speak good English!
All in all - a very good trainer - but I would like to reiterate that leadership is not something which can be taught......
No comments:
Post a Comment