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!