Posts tagged leading

How do you define leadership ?

7
620 days
by in Career thoughts, Life thoughts, Strategy thoughts

Last 4 days, I was fortunate to be part of the ‘Leadership Management Workshop’ and I must acknowledge these days have been an exhilarating, self realizing & self discovering experience.

Being in Amdocs, a company that really makes an effort of developing leadership through specialized programmes such as this one, has been of immense value to me over last 6 months as I am able to get into lot of such workshops / trainings to enhance myself.

leadership Coming back to the workshop that was conducted by Raj Mali, who calls him self a corporate mystic, was conducted over a period of 4 days and had several engaging discussions that ultimately led to the group understanding the secrets of successful corporate leadership. 

Its do have lots to write about the experience of last 4 days and I would be genuinely attempting to write few articles on my experience of last 4 days and how I have grasped, understood and learnt few things. This is obviously the first attempt to start a series of the discussions on the topic of ‘Leadership’.

Our training group of 10 was consisted of managers across various competency centres of Amdocs, some of us were new and coming from other organizations and few of them were veterans who are with the company for close to 10 years or so, thus making it one of the more diverse forums and at the same time, an interesting one.

The common pattern of the last 4 days was consistent. More focus was given on group discussions, observations, role plays and games. It was so surprising that the amount multimedia that was involved was very less. More details on the same, with genuine hope, I will be able to post in coming days on my blog.

 

In this article, I want to reflect on the very first topic that we discussed in the programme and that was a simple question,

 

“What do you think leadership means to you?”

 

On the face value of the question, it looks very simple to everyone, however what surprised me and probably others was that when this was thrown at us, we had really take a pause and think, what it really means?

Few interesting answers that came out of the discussion were,

- Leadership is all about getting things done on time within budget & costs

- Leadership means helping your team grow

- Its about people management

- Its about how you handle issues and the pressure cooker situations

- Leadership is how you motivate people to do their jobs

- Leadership is about managing the work and team

- Leadership is controlling the behaviour and emotions of self and influencing in others

- Leadership is all about setting the rules and helping the followers follow them !

and the answer I gave was “Leadership is all about taking risks and making key decisions that help you grow your team”.  

However, after the session is now complete, what I have understood about leadership is as follows,

Leadership is not a science, its an art.

Its an art on how you understand the mindset of individuals as well as groups, connect with people of various styles and patterns and still form a successful team and achieve a common goal of growth & success. However, none of the above is possible, without yourself making a conscious effort to understand yourself, your own emotions and learn to control and channelize them to create positive energy around.

 

Leadership is demonstrated by various people and they have unique style of executing leadership within the group.  Raj, very effectively classifies all the styles into 4 simple categories and had easily explained them through two games, one group and other pair.

I would like to mention about the games in next article, however, till then, I would like to know your view on what you perceive leadership as and if you have to define, how would be defining the same?

Let me know !

Career progression guide – 3p process

0
1070 days
by in Career thoughts

I thought it might be sensible to publish a post giving the links to all the four posts I put on my blog together so it would be easy for readers to track and view them properly.  So here you go,

Guide for career progression – 3Ps process is a series of FOUR posts.  Other posts on this could be found below.

Part ONE – Overview

Tells about what the process is all about and what are the important phases in the process.

Part TWO – Prepare yourself

Tells about how to prepare yourself and what are the important things that you should keep in mind.

Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player

Tells about how to become a key player in the project and carry out important responsibilities and showing results on the job.

Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress

Finally, tells about how to move on and be ready for next step.

 

Thanks for reading.

Guide for career progression – 3Ps process – Part FOUR – Pass it on and progress

2
1070 days
by in Career thoughts

Pass it on and progress ahead

In the previous two posts I mentioned how to get into a project and become a real dependable and key project member. If you have not read them, I recommend you to check at the bottom of this post to get the links for them.

Assuming you have actually become the key player within the team and enjoyed your time at the top of your capabilities, for a good while, then you should really look forward to ‘start unlearning’ your knowledge in the project and start to build a back up for yourself so you could try and make yourself ready for next step.

When I essentially say ‘unlearn’, you need to ensure that following things are met,

  • Identify the person who could take your role within the project
  • Start personally training the person over the project
  • Ensure the knowledge you have gained on the project is shared / understood and practiced by the second level person you chose
  • Make yourself available to your manager for the work that he need to get done (After all, you are after his job, aren’t you?)
  • Start to make yourself redundant in the project

You might question me on the last point I wrote here, and ask me when the second phase tells me to be a key player in the project, why do you suggest to make yourself redundant in the project now?

Well, valid point but a very very important one. The answer is, unless you make yourself redundant to the work and make project work independent of you, how would you step up to the next role? Got the point !

It is essential to build a good team and good resources in the project when you leave it behind. It shows a good legacy and a good track record of yourself as a professional, manager and good leader. Another thing you need to do in this phase is to engage with your manager more often than you used to do in the earlier phase, see if you could try and understand what work he does, how he does and understand the job expectations.

Secret tip: Your manager also needs to move up the value chain, so help him do so and claim his throne. Give him space to move up and you could move up too !

If you get good luck along the way, you might see a good result in your next performance review, and then you can start applying the phase 1 to your role again ! As I said earlier in my first post, the entire cycle lasts for approx 2-3 years to you got to have patience during the process and show a good willingness to put hard work and show resilience.

Hope this series would have helped you the corporate cycle of career progression. All your comments are welcome as usual.

Cheerio and all the best

This is a series of FOUR posts on Guide for career progression – 3Ps process.  Other posts on this could be found below.

Part ONE – Overview
Part TWO – Prepare yourself
Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player
Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress

Guide for career progression – 3Ps process – Part THREE – Practice hard

0
1072 days
by in Career thoughts

Practice hard – become a key player

In the last two posts about my guide to career progression, I wrote about how you can sense opportunities and prepare yourself for getting into grove.

The next step obviously is to get yourself involved in the project work and become a key player in the project. Now, understanding the term key player is very important to successfully complete this phase.

When I mention key player, I essentially mean that a person should be,

  • Self reliant on any project related work
  • Should be highly dependent & technically very very good on the job
  • Should be able to provide Solutions to the problems
  • Should have in-depth knowledge about the project & surroundings

Being self-reliant is achievable if you actually work really hard to understand the project, learn the project goals and start aligning your own short term goals according to the same. As I say,

Working hard is very very important, working smart is even more !

Becoming key player not only makes you an important person within the project but also makes you more dependable and reliable in terms of gaining the mileage out of your managers. I always emphasize on showing the results rather than just showing your work hours. Showing the work hours does not always help, unless your work demands so.

I expect a period of about 6-8 months again, for someone to become a key player in the project. Mind you, its not easy task to do so. You have to always show eagerness to learn new things, respond to changes & show your capabilities while on the road.

One thing I mentioned in my last post in this series (here) was to Show and prove  that you alone can carry on the project and make the project dependant on yourself. This is a very very important thing in this phase and important exit criteria. Unless you can show your worth to the project, there is a little chance that your work will be noticed and considered worth its efforts by your management. (Sorry to disclose this tip though !)

Some important tips you can remember on the way to become key player are,

  • Show your worth in the project and show results
  • Take initiatives, implement technical solutions to common problems
  • Work smarter and save efforts by automation of routine tasks
  • Keep in mind that results matter, not the hours you burn
  • Achieve efficiency in the process and show benefits to management & customers
  • Be noticed each time !

If you can achieve this and become a key player in the project, it makes things lot easier for making yourself ready for the next phase in your career. As I said earlier, its not easy and probably not achievable without frequent discussions and re-aligning the short term goals with your manager. It is important to keep your manager aware of your progress, your short term goals and how you are able to help the project by your work !

Will write about the final phase probably in next couple of days as and when I get time to put things together. Till then, cheerio !

This is a series of FOUR posts on Guide for career progression – 3Ps process.  Other posts on this could be found below.

Part ONE – Overview
Part TWO – Prepare yourself
Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player
Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress

Guide for career progression – 3Ps process – Part TWO – Prepare yourself

0
1076 days
by in Career thoughts

Prepare yourself

In any job you do, it is very important for you to set up your own goals. Unless you are clear on where you want to go in your career and what your objectives are then most probably you would end up being wood floating on a river.

So, set yourself goals. Realistic, achievable and most notably demonstrable goals, where you could show the output to your managers and peers. It always helps to have, as I said, realistic goals that could possibly achieved in a short term (3-6 months) and long term (2+ years). 

One thing that you should keep in mind while setting goals is the fact that unless your goals satisfy two prime criteria. They are,

  1. Does it benefit your project / organization?
  2. Can that give you a value or a weight in your performance report?

Ok, once you have made your mind clear on the goals then the first and foremost thing you should do is to set the ball rolling by starting to work hard (read smart) in your project and demonstrate that you are absolutely keen and dedicated to the cause of the project (and organization).

Few actions you would like to note are,

  • Understand the project quickly
  • Be a good team player and a listener
  • Help others in the team
  • Demonstrate good results in the project and be dependable
  • Show you can carry out the project on your own shoulders (secret tip – read it as make the project dependant on you) !

Typically you expect to get ready to move into 2nd gear of your progression over a period of 6-8 months.  Once you have have met all above, you are ready to step into the next step and take more challenges on board.

Will write about the step two, in my part three sometime over next few days, so keep an eye here!

This is a series of FOUR posts on Guide for career progression – 3Ps process.  Other posts on this could be found below.

Part ONE – Overview
Part TWO – Prepare yourself
Part THREE – Practice hard, become a key player
Part FOUR – Pass it on & progress

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