I
recently had the opportunity of attending a management development program,
organized by the MSL Group, and there
were some valuable take-a-ways’ that I believe would be helpful to other
managers/ leaders too.
Enclosed
below is a list of points, worth pondering on, and to benchmark you against it.
While all topics listed below were discussed by our brilliant coach Kenny
Toh, Director – Asia Pacific, Bridge Partnership Asia, the perspective
offered may just be my personal take on the subjects.
 |
| A group picture of all managers from the MSL Group [MSL India, 20:20MSL, MSL Social Hive, Creative+ and CNC Communications] who attended the training |
(1) Leaders
spend more ‘Me’ time
At
your workplace, the typical classification of time you would spend, would be on
– ‘It’ time | ‘Us’ time | ‘Me’ time. ‘It’ time implies to all the execution
related tasks, ‘Us’ time refers to all tasks done along with your team and ‘Me’
time is the time you spend on yourself. In the typical rigor of daily life, it’s
usually ‘Me’ time that gets sacrificed for ‘It’ time and ‘Us’ time, but that’s
not right. The ‘Me’ time needs to be looked on as an investment that fuels the
rest of your time.
(2) Work
life harmony
This
point is important for knowledge workers. Today we’re not constrained to a desk
or a machine, via which we work. Our work spills onto weekends, before and after
work hours and that’s because of the evolution of technology. So while work
life balance was once a focus, the new normal is work life harmony, because you’re
professional life is surely going to intervene in your personal time and the
focus needs to be shifted to ‘harmonizing’ both of them.
(3) The
power of being open and not judgmental
The
header says it all. A good manager should not keep any prejudice while hearing
out subordinates. He/ she needs to be open to hearing out ideas, suggestions
and criticism and not be judgmental about it.
(4) Being
in and out of the box
Very
often people find themselves in a box of negativity, depression, anger, disgust
and grief, which affects an individual’s decision making capability. No matter
how hard you try, everyone always gets in a box, but what is in our control, is
how fast you can get out of it. We need to understand the triggers that move
you in the box, evaluate its authenticity, understand your choices and get
moving.
(5) See,
hear and then speak
It
sounds like more of common sense, ‘see, hear and then speak’, but still it’s
the least practiced mantra. In fact more often than not, the typical approach
is - speak, hear and then talk! But doing it the right way will really help in
comprehending the task at hand and get cracking on it.
(6) Combining
positional with personal power
At
the workplace, there are typically 2 types of power in action. One, arises from
your position and the other, arises from your personal self. As a manager your
effectiveness will increase when you combine both to benefit a larger audience.
(7) Feet
forward in networking
A
lot of problems, personal and professional, get solved if you talk to more
people about it. The more people you talk to, the more solutions you’ll have at
hand. That’s basically networking, and it starts from you taking the first step
forward.
(8) Delegation
This
one was a major finding for me from the 3day management training program. That’s
because now I know, giving people a task they were anyways supposed to do, isn’t
delegation! That’s merely job distribution. Delegation occurs when a superior gives
a task the he would otherwise do, to his/ her subordinate, for that subordinate’s
growth. So the focus as managers is not only to distribute/ assign jobs, but
also to delegate for their subordinates personal growth.
(9) The
way of asking
One
of the most common pitfalls for leaders is the way they communicate. It often
leads to their undoing. A question or an instruction given empathetically is
often the difference between the respect he/ she could enjoy over the respect
he/ she currently gets.
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