Frailty thy name is ....

I know I have posted my last blog topic but I have had an incident in the last couple of days which I think reflects the weakness in the leader that I am and I would like to share this with all. Hopefully this should help others in learning from my experience. I have come to realize that I am oversensitive to certain aspects of my life. This exposes my weakness and shows how frail I can be. Unfortunately this does not complement a leader who is supposed to take control of a situation especially in times of crisis.

Shockingly I have been unaware of this over sensitive nature of mine since I am not sensitive to every aspect of my life, nonetheless the few aspects that I am sensitive to brings forth a person who is vulnerable to emotional imbalance and outbursts. Where I should be in control of the situation I have had it back fire so I am completely at a disadvantage. I am in a situation where I am being blamed for someone else's mistake simple because my defenses are down. I have realized that by showing I am extra sensitive to certain aspects of my life helps others take advantage of me during a time my defenses are absolutely weak and I am unable to take a stand for myself.

After a lot of thought I have realized that a poker face in front of others helps us handle a situation better and does not help people pick up on what ticks us off. This will help us handle any crisis as a leader better.

The final blog - thoughts on Leadership as a course

One thing I have learnt from the activities and discussions in the leadership class is that emotional balance is a quality I have to cultivate to better my leadership skills!!! This is the key lesson and I am hoping to make amends towards being a better leader.

I have been toying with the idea of a change in career for a while and the personal encoding activity helped me realize a dream that can come true if I wanted. I did extremely well in the activity and this showed that I do enjoy emoting and communicating and being in a different person's shoes. I am a professional dancer but this has taken a back seat due to my engineering career. However if a change of industry was an idea to consider then I realized that dance and dramatics is something I am interested in and might excel at with adequate effort. This is a revelation and a help towards a dream that is yet to be realized.

I positively feel that the reader our group chose was the best applicable to my leadership goals especially towards maintaining a more balanced emotional exterior. I have to use the stop sign rule for a more peaceful existence in both personal and professional life. Given the fact that my personal life is going through major changes, I need to be constantly using the stop sign rule else I might ruin my relationship with my family members.

Finally I must say that my feedback from the external questionnaire continues to pleasantly surprise me because I realized that others have a better perception of my skills. It has been a confidence booster and will continue to help me grow.

A class in Review (the last blog topic)

The activity that I have reflected back on the most was the Blind Square, how we did it and how it could have been done better. As I had done the activity with Dr. Wells, I was disapointed that I could not have been more successful in Leadership with this activity. Another activity that was very instructional was the concept of acting out different emotions from Dr. Suess words. How I express emotion and what emotion I attach to happenings at work good or bad, is something I which I can improve.

What I remember most from the Book Presentations was the idea of summarizing your life in one sentence, what would that be. I find that sentence easier to define than a personal mission statement like the reader discusses. My one sentence also helped define the 2-3 concrete goals that I have toward improving Leadership skills, my work experience and my entire life. That idea has been very helpful, yet I don't remember the book it came from. The other book topic that was instructive was "Predicably Irrational" which really helps define some of the seemingly nonsensical things people feel to be true.

If I was going to suggest a book it would be "Good to Great" and though it's older, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effecient People."

Micromanagement and Leadership - please let me know your thoughts

Micromanagement is anti leadership in my opinion. I seem to be dealing with micromanagers at various levels in my persona an professional life everyday and having a hard time making peace with it. I have also observed that people's productivity and overall stress management is low when dealing with micromanagers. Someone in a website says "Paranoid incompetent micromanagers (PIMM), who successfully combine tight control of minute details/procedures used in performing assignments with compete incompetence are often called "control freaks" (CF). This category of micromanagers represents really nasty beasts of IT jungles who tend to completely paralyze their victims."

Although, I do not completely agree with the above quote that micromanagement is synonym with incompetent managers, I do agree that micro managers are termed otherwise as control freaks.

Projects are end results of a leader's vision and it is best to break down tasks and delegate it within a team. It is of prime importance for the leader to track the status of the broken down individual tasks for efficient and successful completion of the project. However micromanaging the task owners to a point where they reach frustration does not make a good leader. There is a fine line between good management and micro management.

I am trying hard to not be a micromanager for the projects I handle however would welcome ideas on how to detect if my team is frustrated with my project tracking techniques.

My bigger problem though, is dealing with micromanagers. My personal and professional life seems surrounded by micromanagers. I am not sure if that is my own doing. I have noticed that my emotional outbursts are due to control freaks overlooking my tasks. Emotional imbalance leads to reduction in my productivity. I have also noticed that, of late, my stress levels are blown out of proportion due to this. I am sure this is faced by a lot of people and would like to know a way to manage the micro managers without too much ado. I don't think it is wise to come up with plans which involve a lot of time and effort as it eats into the time allocated for the actual task but there should be a simple solution for this and I am still in search of that.

Final Blog Topic

We've reached the end of this part of your leadership journey - and hopefully you are ready to continue on your own! In this posting, please write about what activity, topic, or reading you found the most interesting and useful. It may be interesting to see how others saw the class and what they found of value.

Also, please briefly describe which book - other than your own - you think was most useful to learn about and if you know of other books that you think would be useful for a future class, please provide the title!

Thanksgiving, Comunisum with hard line Capitalists

When you asked us to recount our thanksgiving and discuss how we use different leadership techniques at different times I laughed. Leadership at our "family" gathering seems nonexistent, however it is not chaos. My family and the people we spend Thanksgiving are a bunch of strays cut from the same block. We all only have immediate family near us. For my family it is due to our immigration from Europe, others are from moves accross the country and some just don't have any family that is still alive. The age range is mixed from 25 to 85 yet we have a lot in-common and widely different views at the same time. Most of us have either worked in business for most of our lives or are working on/have MBAs, yet some are hard line republicans, and others are on the other side of the spectrum. Yet when we get together, we work as a well oiled machine and enjoy ourselves.

Everyone works equally hard, and the meal would not come together if anyone slacked off. There are tough jobs from mixing drinks, to deep frying turkeys and making the sides, and with 15+ running in and out of the kitchen, no one gets hurt and nothing usually gets burnt. It is strange because we are all on the same level even though our skills and experiance are so different.

When I looked back on this, and then reviewed how others view me in leadership roles, something clicked. The reason people see me as middle of the road is because I have learned to adapt and this is something that occurs at our thanksgiving. Every year our duties change and no one complains, we just get it done. At work, voulunteering or in class, I like to read the group I am in and take an educated guess. If that educated guess doesn't work, step back, listen and see what happens next.

I don't want to force something because as i learned helping a friend move in... if the couch doesn't fit through the door, pushing harder will only rip the door frame out. Leading, unless you can wrangle a small country under your control and have no qualms making people dissapear, takes finesse and is as much about observing as it is ordering. So, I would say that I think I am adaptive, and I just need to learn how to adapt better/quicker!

Leadership in Different Groups

I spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles with my aunt and uncle as my family and I have done for all my life except for a year or two. It's an extremely welcoming home that feels calm and tranquil, even when serving 31 people Thanksgiving dinner. Even after my parents separation and my brother's marriage this remains a tradition. My parents alternate years as does my brother and his family, but I generally always go. While I remain my parents child from a generational sense, I would not say that within the family it's regression, as there is a tremendous respect for the childrens' interests and intellect at all ages. I felt growing up, and still now feel love, appreciation and respect by my nuclear and extended family. Rather than regression I feel buoyed and lifted up after spending time with them.

It's fun to see generations of the family grow and change and have their own families. My aunt and uncle are so welcoming that families related through marriage, are welcome and come. One of my cousins was just married and she and her parents and siblings came along with her in laws and husband's siblings. I love this tradition, and the warmth of the home, but I'm slightly off the topic of Leadership.

Within the family I don't have (or really seek) much of leadership position. I think I'm a good contributor within the family.

In the Property Management trade association that I am the local Chapter President this year I think I have a shared leadership style that has been generally very effective. For most significant decisions I ask for the opinions of the Board of Directors, both at our meetings and via email if an urgent issue exists between meetings. I have been fortunate that this volunteer group is very engaged in making this group and our industry better, so many ideas are debated and the good ones executed. With only one exception I only have to ask Board Members once to do something and it gets done. I wish my own office was that efficient!

I manage my own office with an inclusive, but more decisive form of leadership. It is more direct, and yet more informal than my Association Presidency, in that my office is small with only 3 other people in it, so they see my frustration with issues, and get to hear me occasionally vent about people, problems or people creating problems. With the Association, I have a more distant relationship, and I believe that distance likely creates a false positive impression of my leadership.

I believe next year's President will be an excellent leader, based on my conversations with him and my interactions with him on the Board this year. (I must admit to a Hope-Bias in that I was the one who suggested him as the next Chapter President). He is thorough, inclusive and thoughtful. He thinks about all aspects of a decision and considers the many stakeholders it will influence, both currently and in the future. He is good at designing and clearly articulating a vision for the future, as well as taking positive steps to improve our chapter and the organization.

Re: Blog 11 - Seeing ourselves as others see us

In fact my results of how people see me and how I perceive myself were fairly compatible in the test/survey presented in class. The test was very helpful showing which leadership qualities I am doing well and which ones I should improve.

Often it is hard to get an authentic feedback when the majority of people want to tell you what “you want to hear” or flourish too much when doing a constructive feedback. Usually I am very harsh evaluating myself, and it helps me. Also, I try to get feedback from people who disagree with me, or that are not fan of my working style. In fact two of those people agreed to take the survey. It was very interesting that one of them wrote me an email after completing the survey saying that I might not get happy with his review and I told him that those types of feedbacks are exactly what I was looking for. It also reminds me about my one of my approaches getting a job when I put as one of my referrals someone that does not agree with my style.

Re: Blog 10 - Motivation

It’s very easy to motivate me: Get me passionate about something, show me the potential positive outcomes for me, for the company, and for society. Or, just challenge me saying that you do not believe I can do it: Trust me, I can get anything done, as long as it does not harm others.

I also like to believe that I know how to motivate others very well considering that almost always I got the outcomes deserved by my employees. Very very simple formula: You get to know them, understand their motivations and goals, and find a way to match them. Also, people generally lack attention, caring and love. The rare times where this simple formula did not work, I have a serious talk. When people see you as a loving, caring and energetic manager, a simple serious talk is enough for them to understand the gravidity of a situation and follow your instructions.

How I could improve the way I motivate people is a good question that my friends – perhaps Joi, Pryia and Adam – might be able to respond. I believe that sometimes I can get caught on a particular task or project and it might let me to forget for a moment about how employees and colleagues feel. Probably being as attentive as a hawk on my team and in what motivates them.  

Re: Blog 8 - Predictable Irrational

Predictably Irrational was a very interesting class. When we are kids we have a misperception that older people are heroes that always know how to act rationally. Rationality was what I used to differentiate teenagers from adults.  When I got older and integrated better with “adult’s world” I was surprised how irrational anyone can be. And today I believe that NO ONE is 100% sane or rational. Everybody has their own craziness. I also realized how predictable people can be, and in behaviorism classes, I learned how easy is to manipulate people’s decisions and actions when we discover that it is all about how confident people perceive us. Looking at situations as a whole, always being (or pretend to be) confident while acknowledging people’s irrationality and insecurities are certainly the most powerful tools to manipulate any outcome.

Blog 7 - Perception

Not surprising, but very powerful how the impression we have about someone, or the impression someone has about us can influence decisions and attitude. Those perceptions can totally shape the world around us. I am aware of the power of those mind bugs since early age: Since I was a child I always questioned why the bad guy or the witches from cartoons were ugly and the princes, princesses and heroes were always gorgeous. Being disappointed by “beautiful people” (or people who looks like a nice person) and positively surprised by others who look like “bad people” I try and in the majority of the times, I am good trusting people until they prove me wrong. On the same time I highly believe that building relationships is the best way to achieve any outcome so in order to have something done by someone I don’t know much I try to get as closer as I can. Not in a bad and manipulative way but believing that it is more likely that a positive outcome can be raised when people feel important and recognized.

Still, I have few times where my perceptions led me to astray. The only one that I recall is when I was working for Walgreens and I couldn’t believe that seniors were able to shoplift. On the other hand I had many harmful experiences in Brazil with people judging me for being gay: I was locked in a mental clinic for 7 months where people thought I was literally crazy for being gay, others who threaten against my life and even employers who thought I wouldn’t be able to efficiently work because my sexual orientation.  Here I had a couple experiences where people thought I was not able to work well because my limitations with the language. The way I deal with those preconceptions is overcompensating and trying to be my best in all circumstances proving here and back home that my sexual orientation and limitations with English language has no impact in my professional and personal capabilities and values.

How others see us and the middle of the road

Overall, I am pretty shocked at the results from the leadership Assessment. First of all I was shocked at how often I was taking the middle of the road. Then, I was shocked when people agreed with this. For some reason I have always thought of myself as quite ostentatious, outspoken and yet a bit of team worker.

Then, when I took a step back and though about the results, I started to agree with this. Yes I can be loud, and headstrong, however I am more than happy to collaborate and listen, especially when I know I am not a subject-matter expert. However, I am still taken aback at how towards the middle of all these traits other see me as.

I am not sure if this is a weakness, if this means I have a lot to learn, if I am flexible or well rounded. Since I am just starting my career and I am relatively young, I think it is mostly that I have a lot to learn. I need to find out which management techniques work best for me and develop a preference based on my strengths.