Leadership Lesson from CWC 2011 Final!!

Think and Dream for Big picture- You might have heard some of team members that they started thinking about winning the world cup on 2nd Apr. at Mumbai almost 1 and1/2 years back. For an individual it is very important to think for future, visualize the big picture. Visualization help to align one energy and focus to one target.

Lead from the front- You must have seen Dhoni’s innining in WC final match, promoting him in batting order in spite of poor form, this exemplifies leader do have to take ownership and have to lead from the front to win and make history.

Take Risk-Time has gone for taking calculated risk, it’s time to take big risk instead of whatever critics says. Standing tall and setting the example to millions of critics with the action to take.

Have Faith – I am sure many of people around the world had doubted about the reaching the WC final and even winning the WC, after Indian team’s performance on first two matches with Bangladesh and England. India doesn’t have bowling pace battery like the others, we had mediocre medium fast bowlers, who didn’t have coveted ranking, but the faith. Faith of winning and making their country and billions of people proud. Everyone would have different learning from the entire CWC saga, the key is to get it noticed and make the difference!!

Negotiating 20 % pay raise in your appraisal?

Have you ever thought what 20 % pay raise would mean to your Company? When I asked this question to one of my colleague, he amazed and after a slight pause he replied “Well I have no idea, my salary is not increasing, expenses are increasing , children education is becoming costlier, my boss is not happy with me, I don’t know if I am really doing what I should do?”. This is the situation of most of the people in mid career stage. One is not sure about the future, here are few tips to keep oneself abreast with the changing time to keep one’s growing in each sphere of life-

1. Setting Priority-We often forget to identify and to set the priority in our career, this is prevalent in mid career stage. We are relatively agile during the early stage of our career; switching jobs, changing technology, changing domain and even changing the industry, in other sense we are risk taker, that is why we grow both professionally and personally. However with the time, our thought process tend to become monotonous, and we start loosing the agility and hardly try new things. Setting right priority and taking risk remove monotony in our thought process and work and bring back us in growth path. Keeping in mind the 80/20 rule, you can always work on 20% of your priority list which constitute the 80% of change.

2. Keep Learning Attitude-Recently , I asked to one of my colleague With the time our learning gets slacken and require bit of extra effort to learn new things, develop new skill and expose your self to new technology. Pursuing higher education, obtaining certification, going through with part time courses help in maintaining the learning path in one’s career. If you can justify that there is 20% increase is your skills level to your boss that would help him to place your case better to the company.

3. Link Your Performance with the Growth of the Company- Well most of the organisation has performance linked growth at top management level, or so called CXO level. With the changing dynamics of the market, sustaining growth for long run require meticulous planning and strategies. However at middle management level, it would be hard for negotiating 20% growth or so if the company hasn’t grown with the same pace during the year. Keeping the watch in the quarterly growth and overall growth of the company would help you to align yourself accordingly while you are pitching for appraisal cycle. I appreciate your feedback and comments to help in Negotiating 20% raise in one’s appraisal.

How to control attrition in your Team?

< Back to My Writing Pad

TEAM- Together every one achieve More- This is what has been taught about the definition of team or the essence of having a team. However building the right Team is an upheaval tasks for every people manager, and that decide the due course of success of any project, tasks and team. Blending the right member, giving the right strength is what every manager look for while building the team, where as in pursuant of all , manager often forget to understand and manage the expectation of his team members-
In my view if a manager is good in tapping the expectation of his team members and come up with the mutual plan for managing those expectation, would bring him great success in the project. I have personally followed below strategies to manage this.
1. Remember every individual is unique and have different needs; this is some thing which every manager knows, but rarely implement.
2. Develop the mutual development plan for every individuals- Since each one have different background, different priority, so one fix plan can not be successful.
3. Treat your team and your peers; this is something very difficult for person who has directive approach of leadership.
4. Empower your team-You should give independent charge of each activity, let’s them do the work in their own way, let’s them to experiment.
5. Pat them in case of failure as well,-With the change in the technology, we can not expect one’s to be an expert of each and every tasks given to give. One needs to experiment. Learning happens through failure as well. Managers always pat his team in case of success; however team needs him in difficult time, when things are not favorable.
These are just few thought, which has been experienced by self, you may have different view point and have different way of handling the team.