LEADING PEOPLE WHEN THEY KNOW MORE THAN YOU!

A leader is someone who guides, motivates, channelize the efforts of his subordinates towards the attainment of organisational goals, it is a leader who addresses all the predicaments, gives pragmatic and feasible solution in uncertain contingent situations,

Supposedly one fine morning, a subordinates turns up in front of you, baffled and perplexed, with the only gleam of hope that you are going to resolve his issue ,and at that point of time you feel helpless because the subject matter of his confusion is not your forte, because we all specialise in one particular field throughout  our life, and it is quite blatant that you can’t be the master of all the trades

You will probably conclude that it cannot be done .Your subordinates will ask questions that you cannot answer and may not even understand. How can you lead them when they know a lot more about their work than you do? Welcome to reality: You are now the leader without expertise—and this is where you, possibly for the first time in your career, find yourself failing. You feel frustrated, tired and disoriented, even angry. This is the point where careers can derail. If you get to this point, or see yourself headed in this direction, what can you do?

First you need to resist your natural inclination of putting head down and working hard to master the situation, Many of us start specialising to do away with the feeling of embarrassment next time, but what we failed to understand that if it took at least twenty years to master your field, how will you be able to realise something like that in a matter of days

This is something which not only pertains to the corporate world , it is something that bears great amount of significance in all fields, because at a certain stage in life you arrive at a situation ,where you need to execute leadership qualities ,but we all fail in our attempts ,

This stresses the importance of informal channels of communication, an ice breaker session, a dine at Oberoi with your employees , is not going to churn up whooping sales, but what  you are going to definitely attain is a cordial relation with your employees ,upon which you can leverage to not only control the attrition rate but also give substantiation to the remarks of Peter Drucker, who well quoted that ‘ Management is the art of getting things done through the efforts of other people

Recent instances could be the overhaul of Infosys limited brought about by the CEO Vishal Sikka , when he took over the management of the company ,his primary objective was to develop mutual, trust ,hope and confidence among his employees, at that point of time when the attrition rate had escalated to touch the sky

But his reforms turned the tides around for the company and the company has again fetched the trust of his shareholders, employees

Thus the transition to generalist management can signal the end for successful specialist managers. But if you realize that you no longer have to be, or even should be, the expert, this can be the most fulfilling and satisfying moment in your career. Your role as a leader is to bring out the best in others, even when they know more than you

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