Think and act ‘Beyond The Obvious’

One of the finest qualities of a manager is his ability to 'Not to get emotionally dragged'. The ability of seeing things objectively will highly enhance the management quality in us.

Being in this stage, dealing with 100 different issues at the same time becomes so natural. You will never miss out on reading important mails, on mail reverts, and even attending an evening party while a crucial delivery is happening in parallel on the other end.

Keeping one or more focus in your career is extremely

important to attain this stage. You can decide the number of focus points depending on your multi tasking capability. But it is advised to start with minimum.

It can be things like;

• Achieving you project/unit/company goal in terms of revenue, number of employs
• Achieving client delivery excellence etc
• Achieving your personal goals (But make sure your personal goals are aligned with company goals)
• Achieving a high level of employee satisfaction in your team

Once you have this goal, you are all set to tackle many issues that you will come across on a day to day basis. Having set the background for the topic, let me come back to my topic - 'Think and act beyond the obvious'. Among the many of the issues that you may come across, I am interested in applying the above logic in ‘Team handling' and related issues'.

While handling the team all managers will come invariably deal with - appraisal sessions and related activities.

Going by the guidelines set by the organization without any deviation during appraisal sessions is one way of doing it. It doesn’t require much skill and can be done easily.

But being intelligent and applying logics along with the above will take it one step further and will really help the team perform in future.

At this point you should start 'Think and act beyond the obvious'. There are certain acts which falls in 'beyond the obvious' category - which I would categorize as 'Value adds' while managing. Which means, it doesnt necessarily fall in to the standard guidlines set by the organization.
To make it clear, please see the below chart.

The moment we add more dimensions to the obvious category tasks, the quality of thinking pattern in the team changes. This changes the dynamics of the team. And when team’s thinking pattern is focused and matured, it becomes collective consciousness.

Yes!.. This is the level at which a manager should operate.

It is your capability to make your team think beyond the call of their duty, that makes the difference, ultimately it will lead to a dynamic team.

As a Manager, you should know the depth of your teams capability. If you don’t know where you stand at the moment, you can’t take your ship to the next required port. This is a world that moves on theory of relativity.

The team is as good as the team's manager.

Significance of Emotional Quotient In Communication And Decision Making

There is only a fine line between flipping from a balanced emotional state in to either getting rude or emotional break down. The so called professional behavior is highly backed by a good emotional stability of a person.

The emotional stability to be able to tackle an issue(particularly people related) very much require a person to rise above the entanglements of feelings and see even his own feelings from a third person's point of view.

One of the techniques I use to take a fair decision is as follows.

When a person approaches me with a people related issue, I approach the same the following way.

• First job for me is to set my mind clear from other issues that I might be handling. This helps me to stabilize myself in the highly responsible role of a good advisor and conscious keeper.
• I start with the assumption is that this person has never tried to see things from the other person's point of view. With this assumption in mind, I take up the devils advocate role during discussion. This helps me to test the person's own conviction towards his view points on the issue that he is facing.
• During the discussion, I verify if the person has already shared his issue with some one in pursuit of some relief. If yes, I do an additional task of delinking the issue from possibly accumulated notions and incorrect resolutions he might have already resorted to.
• I assume that the issue is going to be presented before me with lot of attached feelings; simply because we naturally have a tendency to justify our doings. And the easiest way to justify things is by attaching feelings with it :-). This helps me to unlock the person from his emotions and think wisely and strategically. I believe that a person will clinch on to is feelings only until he gets an avenue to release it. Once it is released, generally people feel very light and free. I try to be the person who can facilitate the same.
• It requires an extreme level of integrity from my side to keep the discussion points to myself.
• After listening to the issue, I give my perspective on how it can be resolved.
• Even though, people seem to react very positively to discussions like this, I still believe, one discussion is too less a time for any one to take some solid decisions. Enough time is given to the person to do his home work to resolve the issue. Hence irrespective of whether person was open to the suggestions or not, I just end the discussion by putting my views and giving him enough time to think over and assimilate and act.
• I do not believe any one can be judged with one conversation and hence I too need time to study the case. While the person goes back to his desk taking his own time to work up on the issue, I also utilize that time to study the case and look out for any better resolution.
• Depending on how the issue resolution progresses over next couple of hours/days, I gear up for the next level of discussion.
• This exercise finally ends where the person has resolved the issue in the best possible way.

Last but not the least, inviting a person to discussion and suggesting solution is not a kids job for me. It is as serious as taking an important decision in my own life. This is because I do not know how much my suggestions influence a person's decisions. Hence I keep a special attention to ensure my suggestion will do the best for the long term benefit of the person ,Team and the Organization.