Another lame post about self improvement

My experiments with people management - please do not read of you are not me.

As I have already mentioned (about a 100 times in the most boring manner) I think I suck at people management. (There I said it). To some people it comes naturally but to me its IS hard really hard to trust people with responsibility. Baljeet ma'am had once said that 'to see the good in others' is a great art. Well if its an art... I need to polish my skills at it.

Hence,

I decided to change few things (or was forced to given the circumstances and future prospects) because I think if I am to do anything beyond what I am doing now I need to grow up and let go (sound familiar eh.) So Dibs (who has recently started working) and I discussed few things and looked up the internet for some tips. I have since been trying to experiment with some of these tips.

Experiment 1: How to deal with another perfectionist? ;)
Over a call with a Japanese client (yes, Moshi Moshi wala), things were not so good and our supersmart salesperson is asking why certain things are not as the client expected. He is pissed as he has been trying to identify the problem and is losing patience.
I started out by agreeing with him and gradually told him the correct picture. Honestly, I was really frustrated at what he expected us to do and holding the frustration back over the call was an achievement in itself.
The salesguy translated and let the client know. Things went upwards from. Though this is not the good part.
The good part was that after the call I wrote an email to the sales guy saying that I appreciate his help with the translation over the call and his patience had increased the effectiveness of our communication manifold.

Sparks, lightening and thunder! The guy actually melted and wrote a whole paragraph about what he liked about our work!!! Haha! and this meant a lot! Coming from one of the toughest CEs to work with!

This stuff (tips) actually works!

Experiment 2: How to motivate people to work harder/be more productive?
So there is this talented young person in my team who had been .. what is the right word?... distracted from work a lot off late. The work/quality was suffering. And while I did want to tell him this, I didn't want to demotivate him. So, I took him aside and said that he is responsible for 1/3rd of the research piece and informed him of the timeline. I also said that he is responsible for training the new guy.

So he IMs me later and says he is happy we had the discussion and training new people is our collective responsibility. and in the end he finished in time even though with some help. It worked again!!

More to come! or as you are thinking Bore to come.

(To the non-working types and the rest of the world who isn't me, this would sound.. well.. boring or the work of an workoholic. But to be honest this is something I did wanted to change. Ghar pe shanti iske saath free free free ;) )