Effective Manager
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THE EFFECTIVE MANAGER
Word Count = 2,720
Introduction – It is never easy to reveal your ideas to a perfect stranger, yet in the following pages I am making a sincere attempt to portray an accurate picture of what I have learnt.
“Children pick up words as pigeons peas….” The seeds of what I am and what I believe in, were sowed during my ages when I grew up and my recent work life, which was competitive, protected but yet a fight for supremacy. I was always encouraged to be myself from a very young age, which is what I still believe in.
A commerce background with travel and tourism vocationals and an internship at SOTC (Leading Travel Agency In India — Having Many International Branches) gave me an absolute insight view on the travel market in India and the international markets that they catered to. Post that I was involved in working for an exports firm, Kayson International, with responsibilities of an exports executive and marketing field. Putting my web programming skills in use, we branched out into E-Commerce and E-Marketing.
Going to the woods was a completely outstanding exercise for me. The woods workshop made me learn a lot and relate the same to the experiences I had in my previous work life and the below mentioned theories.
Beginning to summarize the objectives, an effective interaction with the team members strengthened my desire to learn more about the hidden talents and special abilities of my team members to be a more effective team member and a team leader.
It showed me a reflection on when I was involved with SOTC (India’s Leading Travel Organizers). They always encouraged a more interactive atmosphere by meetings with functional and project members often to know if loops lie within the functioning. The results were made as a base of planning for the strategy that would be altered for the market. A similar glimpse of that was successfully seen what we were doing in the woods.
I believe that the basic task of the activities was to
Set up the objective
Utilize the resources
Collect the ideas — Differentiate into Feasible and non — feasible ones.
Plan the course of action
Action the Plan
Review it for errors in successful functioning
It envisages moreover, a good control system and reviewed error checking from time to time to find out flaws in functioning – like what SOTC did from time to time. To find out employee job satisfaction in their work — regular, time to time questionnaires built on MBTI base were given. The Idea behind this activity was to have a successful functioning of the team as a whole.
Similarly, while talking about the team in the woods, different types of people had inaccuracies in terms of skills which differed from person to person. The success relied on the fact of utilizing all the factors at an optimum level. The best suited person in one phase wouldn’t be as useful to the other!
Further, I also learn the theory of MBTI and know the different personality types (Dunning, 2003). We saw the different types of people in our groups and accordingly adjusted to them. Being a complete ENTJ, my opinion was voiced but knowing the types of others we gave them space to voice their opinions as well, making it a very interactive atmosphere to dwell in. It proves to be a concrete base for active selection of workforce on the specified basis which is also believed by many multi national firms like SOTC.
Games like Plug in the hole, Mohawk walk, Night Line, Spiders web, Electric fence taught us the basics of team work. We were amateurs to start off and did a couple of mistakes to start with. I personally thought we worked well and the attributes that I relate to the good functioning would be —
Lots of effective ideas — lots of choice between them!
An open minded approach
Respect of individual opinion
Involvement by everyone
Idea building — follow up of loop-holes
A good and helpful environment was created
Mistakes were identified as stepping stones to success
Blames were not perceived personally
It was very much a similar scenario when I started working for SOTC- The travel company and can also relate the fact to Tuckman’s theory of Team Development by Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning.(Businessballs.com)
Forming — “The team depends heavily on the leader for direction. There is no delegation of work and the responsibilities of an individual are unknown. The leader of the team should be very well versed with the questions that will arise from the group leaders as they are still trying to understand the objectives. The leader should at this stage be patient to make a successful group.”(Businessballs.com) Like at SOTC, was a new work environment for me and I was new to everyone and had to get absorbed in the huge travel organization as a member of their team. Similarly the people in the team for the woods workshop were relatively new to each other and were looking to build a comfort level first. It was clear to me that my group and I were passing by this stage.
Storming — “The comfort level in this stage starts to rise. The stage comprises of members now in the race for supremacy of authority. There are a lot of disagreements on the opinions of others but the roles/work is delegated finally. The people who were leaders to start with might not make it until the end of this stage. There is a lot of confusion in the group and behavior of the people —a stage where the group is growing up as a child.”
(Businessballs.com) Where I began to participate in the meetings and had valid contributions and counter views about the decisions being taken and due respect was given to the various suggestions coming from different team members. It was a similar case