Focus on Process than People

In the workplace or even in a family environment, when the things are not happening as expected, or any problem occurs, the most immediate tendency of us is “fixing who is responsible?”. For any issues, finding the cause is a good thing, but the moment we focus our the cause on “People” factor, it likely turns out as blaming, complaining, justification, arguments and eventually into personal vengeance only.

As I observed with effective leaders, they focus more on fixing the “process factor” than the people. Once the problem occurred, they immediately recognize it, and their thought process moves towards fixing process as they believe that is a proactive approach. They believe that when the process is robust, ignorance, attitude related to people can be solved quickly. Sometimes fixing process may prevent the issue permanently as well as take care of human errors.

For example, some of the mistakes in organizing an event can be minimized when you have a checklist rather than depending solely on people. That is a proactive approach with process focussed.

Shifting the focus on fixing “process” than  “people” is possible with a little bit of awareness on our intention and behavior. For any problem solution lies in process, in turn, the process will take care of people factor also.

Just it needs awareness when we face the problem.

Book: Start with WHY

Recently came across this book, and the perspective shared by the Author seems to be very useful for both personal and professional life to lead and inspire others.

Some people or organizations inspire others to take actions and some struggle. One of the reasons as described in the book is the leader or organization has clarity about their PURPOSE. They start with WHY than WHAT or HOW  as rest of the world is doing.

In this book, the author has given real-world examples of both organizations and highly effective leaders on using the principles of starting with WHY and also explaining other benefits of this concept throughout the book.

If you would like to learn how inspiring leaders think and act, then I recommend this book to buy, read, and enhance your perspectives.

Book is available in Amazon; Link is given below
 

https://amzn.to/2M9YCfx

How are you perceived in the workplace?

In spite of your professional competency, how others are perceiving you in a workplace is an essential factor for your career growth. When you know the perception by others, it will be an eyeopener for you for both on strength and area for improvements.

Sometimes, you may not realize your strength since it is readily coming to you. Similarly, some of the weakness or area for improvements may not be known to you. Others are experiencing both, and they are forming a perception about you. When you know how others are perceiving you, that will give clarity to shape up your personality, which will propel your career growth.

How to know other's perception about you?

• Identify 3~5 people in your organization who are interacting with you more frequently. They could be your boss, your colleagues or your reportees. Some of you may be your wellwishers and observing you from distant
• Approach them with prior permission and tell your intention of knowing their opinions or perspective about you based on the association on the professional front.
• When they give their perspectives, avoid the tendency to defend or justify you
• Thank them for their feedback and consolidate the findings. If same or similar observations are pointed out by many, that could be your strength which you can leverage further or that could be your area for improvement which you can work on that.

The above method is powerful for personal development process you can try it out once in a year.!!

Lessons learned on email communication.

Most of us might have come across the following situation in professional life.

"You might have received an email either from your colleague or boss or team or customer, and the mail content induced anger or frustration within you. Immediately you reacted to the mail by bursting all your emotions by way of words and pressed the sent button. Later on, you felt that you overreacted or subsequent mail communications led to friction in relationships or waste of time. In either way, you might have realized the incident should not have happened."

Some years back it happened to me to receive a mail from one of my clients, and I reacted very harshly in a reply mail. However, fortunately, due to some intuition, I kept in the draft without sending. I had given some time to read the contents again and again. Then I called the client over the phone, and to my surprise, the client responded to my call, patiently explained his views which were quite the opposite to what I interpreted the mail content. The problem was eventually solved and our relationship is continuing till now.

the key lessons I learned from the incident were 

1. Unlike in verbal  communication.we  may not understand the intention of the content in written communication. In verbal communication, we may understand the intention through tone quality to some extent. We need the patience to interpret the contents rightly.
2. We should avoid the temptation to react to mail communications immediately. Email as a tool is not for instant communication We can take time and respond.
3. Even the mail content evokes negative emotions; we can give some time to dilute the emotion Any problem is solvable if it is understood in the right perspective and good state of mind.

To sum up, we should not react to email communications while in emotionally feeling low. Take time and then respond for better relationships and quality of life.

Summing up -Leadership Development Process

As we discussed last 35 weeks on developing leadership qualities from “ Inside to outside” perspective, now let us summarise the learnings as a temporary break on this subject.
 
Leadership is all about making a positive impact on others through your thoughts, words, action and delivering result.It is more about Inner strength which will be visible externally through your impact.

Personal leadership is precedent to organizational leadership, and it is the responsibility of an individual to improve his / her personal leadership qualities irrespective of the age, qualification, and position, and this is a continuous journey.
 
Steps in leadership development journey are as follows

Leading Self – (Self image / Taking responsibility/ Discipline / Being grateful / Faith)
Leading Others –( Building Trust / Connecting with care / Enhancing Tolerance/ Improving communication / Earning the respect)
Leading through Results –( Making Impact at self / Developing Thought leadership / Managing Result )
Leading through developing others –(Teaching / Guiding / Giving Feedback / Coaching)
 
The above steps are just an overview of the leadership development process from my perspective, and it is up to an individual to experience the process on his / her own.

Each one of us has the leadership seed internally, and that has to be nurtured with awareness and practices throughout life.

Developing others through Coaching

As discussed, on the job training and giving feedback are some of the ways to develop others as a leader in a professional setup. Another method of developing others is through Coaching.

what is coaching?

Coaching is helping others to improve performance either by acquiring new skills or a developing new set of behaviors to achieve the desired goal. As a coach, you need to be working with them on their journey till they get their destination.

This coaching requires more of your time and effort compared to other forms of helping. Coaching is more of handholding the person until he/ she learns new skill or behavior.

 For example, if one of your team members is taking up a new role and he /she requires to develop some business skills and you need to be available for guidance till he/she acquires the ability or developing a set of behaviors. Being with them as a guide either physically or emotionally is the essence of coaching.
 
To sum up, as a leader, you can help others to grow by teaching your knowledge, sharing your experience, giving feedback and handholding in the journey until they reach the destination.

 In today’s professional environment, people in every level need some sort of handholding in their journey of growth.

The action is that you need to ask yourselves whether you spend quality time to help others to develop in their profession irrespective of the size of people you are handling. This shift is required for you and your team's growth !!!!

Giving Feedback for Development

One of the powerful methods of developing others is qualitatively giving feedback.

What is meant by feedback to others?
Feedback is your opinion or comment about other's positive or limiting behavior in any task or performance.
 
Why is feedback important for development?
Each one has their strength and limitation which may not be known to self. When it is pointed out time as feedback, it may help others to reinforce the strength or help to give up the behavior in case of limitation by taking improvement action.

How to give feedback to others?
Before giving feedback, understand your intention as this sets your tone and quality of feedback, whether your purpose is to criticize or to help another person to improve his behavior.
 
One of the effective ways to give feedback is by adopting the following pattern in your communication. 

“ what you notice/observe as good or bad behavior ”  and  “ some reasonings to be good or bad” and " suggestions to improve."  

For example,

you observe some repeated mistakes by your team member while preparing a presentation, and you can point out like this
 
“I observed repeated formatting issue in your presentation and how this performance will irritate the audience on readability  and how you can improve  by so and so methods." 
 
or you would like to give positive feedback about your colleague’s presentation, and your feedback  can be like this
 
"I liked the way you simplified the complex problem into the simple picture, and this helps the audience to connect the concept quickly."
 
Giving feedback is the art of communication, and this can be improved in multiple ways when your intention of providing feedback to help or develop others.

Methods of Developing Others

As discussed last week, developing others is a prime responsibility of senior people both in professional and personal life.

Development of others is all about SPENDING YOUR QUALITY TIME with others when it is required by others on different occasions to help them to improve their professional competency and to grow in life.

How can you develop others?
 
There are multiple methods you can develop others. Development efforts can be imparted to others in the following ways.
 
1.Teaching or Guiding  about the work
2. Giving feedback
3.Coaching
 
1.Teaching or Guiding about the work :
 
This method is more about transferring your knowledge, experiences, insights about the job when assigning work to your team, or when the team is undergoing challenges during execution.
 
It is all about teaching, handholding others by being with them before and during execution.
 
 For example, you may be the expert in “ Product costing, “ and if you are teaching or sharing relevant information, methods of calculating, typical failure modes, your experiences in different costing methods to your team member, then, that is teaching and guiding.
 
Sharing of knowledge to another requires passion, patience and good communication from your end.
 
As I observed  a few senior people expecting others to do the job by saying “ what “ and not spending time on “How.“Their thought process is not to get into micromanagement or not to spoil the thinking process of others. We need to understand the difference between guiding and minute level instruction or follow-up.    
 
 By consciously shifting your effort on imparting your knowledge to others, development starts.

Let us discuss some insights about feedback and coaching next week!

Have a great week till then! 
 

Barriers to developing others

In continuation of last week discussion on some of the misconceptions/ barriers  in developing others, remaining are given below
 
 "I do not have time on development; I have my work."

Most of the managers expressed this as the barrier for developing others. The underlying cause for this expression is how we look at the position. Even after elevating from individual contributor to lead with responsibility for the team, we think of self-contribution only.
 If you start to look at your positional success as 50 % development of others, 50 % of the individual contribution, then your perspective will change about your responsibility towards developing others.
 
 "Development is HR functional activities."

Some of us have a misconception that the HR function should take care of people development. In my opinion, HR function can only facilitate the environment for development, the immediate supervisors/ managers only can understand his teammates in a better way on the development aspects, and he must be the owner for development.
All other functions play a supporting role only.

“People are not picking up; they are not interested.”
 
 This expression is also related to the compassion and care a team leader display towards the team. Each people require different methodology of teaching or communication. When the lead does not equip enough to learn the different communication process and eventually lose the patience to develop others.

The point is how you are looking at your job and people makes a difference in your intention to develop others.
 
Sometimes, an organizational environment is also not conducive for spending time on the development of people.

However, it is a primary responsibility of managers/leaders to develop the team and through them to deliver the result for holistic growth.

The action point is to look at your perspectives about people, your position and development aspects! 

Leading through development -(Misconceptions in developing others)

As we discussed the importance of developing others for both personal and organizational success, some misconceptions and barriers that prevent some people from spending time on developing others. As an exception, some people are very passionate about genuinely developing others. If we bring clarity on the misconceptions and the barriers, that will change the way they look at the development process.

As I came across some of the phrases, people use regarding development, and I consider those statements as misconceptions and barriers. Unless we change those mindsets underlying those statements, externally, we may not spend quality time on development.

“People are educated and experienced enough to do the job; that is why they are hired.”
“ People development has to be done by HR functions.”
“ I do not have time for development; I have my work to do.”
“ People are not picking up; they are not interested.”
 
Let us discuss each of the statements

“People are educated and experienced enough to do the job; that is why they are hired.”
 
In today’s given complexity of work, changes in business assumptions, challenges on planning and execution, outgrowing technologies on both personal and business processes, not all the people are equipped to that environment even though qualified. People need guidance, perspectives, motivation, push from the immediate supervisors/managers to unlearn, learn, experiment, experience and deliver the results.

For example, most of the people are aware and qualified in modern problem-solving methodologies, tools, and techniques. Still, the organization suffers from the solutions approach or converging to solutions on implementation. This situation calls for experience, insights on using different methodologies, tools, and techniques. If the team is not helped by seniors to look at the insight of the data and guided to arrive solutions, then, the team is regarded as not equipped enough on problem-solving.

Hence, as an experienced or senior person, your time on development becomes essential even though the team is formally qualified and experienced in a different environment.

Let us discuss other misconceptions next week!