Team Building practices for 2022.
Deadline is important, but not more than the well-being of your team members.
Dear Friends,
I am glad to tell you that I have fully recovered from the virus and am back in Mumbai safely tucked in my home. I hope all of you are keeping safe and healthy too.
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You know my journey right? So you know that before I plunged into the world of content, I did engineering and I also got placed. I worked at a Swedish manufacturing firm for 11 months and then I quit.
The boss I had over there was not the best person to work with and was absolutely not easy to work under. And it’s not just about him, almost all “bosses” (figures of authority) I have worked under in my life before I became a content creator were difficult, dull, and stringent.
So, I had decided long ago that if ever I get to be in a place where I am the boss, I will be different, I will lead by example. And throughout the last half-decade, I have tried my best to stand true to that.
I strongly believe that you are only as good as your team. Your team is your strength and your weakness.
It will help you grow beyond limits but it can also bring you the biggest setbacks. And one person in that team has the most responsibility, call them what you want- head, leader, boss, chief, etc. The figure of authority sets the tone for the entire team. They set up practices that are ultimately professed by the entire team good and bad.
For a year now I have been working at Pepper where I am also under someone, but I am also the lead of a team with intersections of media, writing, events, marketing. As a community leader there I am also constantly interacting with teams and heads of other companies. And through all of this, I have learned so much and understood the dynamics of what it takes to run a successful team.
Every firm needs a hierarchy in order to function. But, I strongly feel that the hierarchy should only be managerial. It should not translate into dominance.
A good leader understands that they are not better or above their team.
A good leader is made of vision and empathy, not authority or dominance.
Kindness in workplaces is the need of the hour. We have drowned ourselves in this mechanical productive frenzied world. We have reduced people to excel sheets and emails.
In between all this hustle, we often forget how to be humane towards ourselves and also towards others. Yes, the deadline is important, but not more than the well-being of your employee who has been overworking themselves even on weekends!
Little acts of kindness and overall considerate practices are so so important in constituting the overall health of the workplace.
I know so many people who have left their stable well-paying jobs because they have felt disrespected and not cared for by their colleagues and heads. I also know a lot of people who have stayed back at their place of work only because the people around them are so warm and supportive.
Team building is a skill in itself. It is a very subjective skill because no one practice will work for all teams. Because every employee is different, they have different capabilities and different weaknesses.
And I think the biggest challenge for a team leader is to gauge this individual uniqueness and then work with it.
Work with it in such a way that the uniqueness of all members complements each other. When this happens, everyone feels heard and seen and they reciprocate by contributing more wholeheartedly, by adding real value not just in terms of work but also in terms of energy and passion, and vision.
Thank you so much for reading till the end. Do let me know what are your thoughts about the same. Do you agree? Do you disagree? I would love to know.
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I could totally relate to this. Also, being someone who had to resign as the "boss" was unbearable to deal with. Coming to the Deadlines, one observation I have is few Bosses like to say earlier date as deadline than the actual deadline. Now there might be various reasons to do that, but doing this shows that you don't trust your team to tell the truth. You beleive that unless you lie, work is not getting done. If this is the case, then I think this is actually a failure of 'Boss', even though he/she might be able to deliver on time.
Thank you for writing useful and relatable post.
I can totally relate with both the scenarios. Have been there, done that! I find myself fortunate that currently I am in a firm where mental health is taken care of. However, this problem is really concerning because even after such a pandemic, people have not changed the behavior towards employees. There are people who are trying to cope up with offices while struggling a lot with mental health. We can definitely create a healthy environment at work for them.
Deadlines are however important but creating realistic deadline is the work of both, the boss and the employee (to whom the work is assigned).