Don't make clown out of you

I was flying with collages on the way back from a conference. we were split onto groups.

After some time I realised that drinks were severed and many of us on the second or third round. It is quite normal on the long haul flights.

In front row, one started talking about senior manager's last visit. He was describing every minute details about his behaviour and making jokes out of it. Every one enjoyed it and shown interest to know more.

Week passed and some of met again for a meeting. In the evening we were in the dining hall of the hotel. After some time one of us passed a comment,

"make sure that Mr X is not around otherwise next time every one will know what were doing tonight".

I was shocked as I remember that on the flight, same people were enjoying his jokes and encouraging him to do so more .

I think that was a free lesson to all us that don't make clown out of you no matter how senior you are in the organisation.

Power of communication -2

Senior Manager decide to brief team so the outlook invite was sent out to assemble on an audio. It was short notice but everyone made efforts to join the voice conference.

Audio conference started with greetings and next statement is that

" I am not happy to have such call ..."

Just after some moments, silence was felt on the call and even speaker after two minute of talk asked question to check the presence of an audience.

We were in one room ,confusion was visible , many questions were in air , still every one was trying to understand the purpose of the call and what is there for them.

I was aware of the context hence could relate the conversations.

This could have been more effective if the context were set before the actual message is conveyed to the team.

After voice conference, one of us decided to have quick chat in the meeting room and started all over again.

1. context was set by explaining why the call was held
2. explained the issue occurred in the recent past
3. explained the impacts of the issue on customer relations and financial losses
4. root cause
5. benefit of sharing this information with wider audience to avoid such occurrence again.

At the end, it was realised that emotions were too high during this voice conference to deliver high impact message. Perhaps this could have planned carefully and probably next day when things are claim and blood pressure is normal then desire impact could have been achieved with minimal efforts.

Power of communication - 1

My team is part of large group, this is divided in to three teams and teams are lead by leaders.

We work in matrix organisation which creates dependencies among us. Teams are spread across different locations and not all team members are in same location as team leaders.

One of us i.e. team leader choose to work in isolation. To ensure his success he built good rapo with team members from other teams . This relationship is helping him in getting all work done and ensure timely deliveries.

Over the period other team leaders learned about it and made a request to him to share his plans etc which off course was refused diplomatically. we could see it is all about showing down other leaders in terms of power and achievements.

After some time impact of his behaviour was that the staff which was not part of his team was not getting recognised for their extra efforts as they were not shared with respective team leaders. Other effects were

1. Efforts estimations and plans produced by teams were always way out
2. Team size estimations were proving wrong
3. Team members were dissatisfied as they were driven by some one else and not by their team leader
4. Staff could feel the power struggle at the leadership level ,not presenting good example
5 Insecurity is built up due to directives from all possible leaders.
6. Communication is confusing.
7. Misguided appraisals.

and on the top of this, the group is directionless and scavenger are put to advantage which is not at all in favour of the progress of the group.

The great danger of achieving success like this is turning him self in a suspicious leader and who least trust his team.

Be positive and get an extra mile

Me and my competitors were in meeting with customer, off course this customer initiated meeting.

Meeting room was full of people and fortunately it was not divided into groups and was just down to the fact that some people in room were meeting for first time, in short no natural groups were formed in the room.

Meeting was all about bringing change in the way we work, new tool is being introduced.

First half an hour was spent in the introductions and I could see that natural linkage was made among people from my company and competitors.

Over period of meeting few thoughts emerged , some positive and some negative. customer was getting pleased as soon as some support is expressed and visa versa.

During break customer was making individual conversation to dig into negative points presented during the meeting, just to ensure that he understands the rational behind the resistance. He used this information in the second half of the meeting either as action points or comments to note.

At the end of the meeting I could see that people who opposed most to the change were not seen as part of the picture where as people to presented positive thoughts with details of concerns were seen as supporter of the change.

for example

Negative person : we have been though such change in past and it did not worked so i doubt it will work this time.

Positive person : this change should bring good results as i see that the learning from past is implemented here and one or two more improvements should make this successful.

You will observe that both are pointing to past failures in different way. The customer is also aware of past failure but this time he is looking for more support for this initiative naturally he will lean toward positive person to ensure the success.

In gist , be supportive at the same time do not fail to point to improvement it may require to make it success story.