Author: mithunhebbar

  Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to the a podcast on Management tools that stressed on building professional relationships. Those words have stuck with me – how well does it describe the relationship between colleagues at the office?! Professional relationships are what every Manager seeks to build between himself and his team and between other peers and colleagues at the work place. Indeed, every professional in any field of work would do well to build a relationship that is built on trust and honesty with other professionals. Trust is the cornerstone that any relation is built upon and it is trust that every team member looks for in his/ her Manager or leader. The belief that he/ she will look out for their best interests and for that of the team needs to be inculcated and this can only happen over time. Once the trust has been built, nurturing it and maintaining it becomes as important as building

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I had the opportunity to be part of an event recently that got me thinking in multiple dimensions. One of the most interesting of these dimensions was one about self management. There are volumes written about how leaders should be, could be and are. There are books on managing projects and leading teams. I’m not sure how many of these place enough importance on self management. In a public setting, when meeting with a whole bunch of strangers for the first time and working together as a team, who you are as a person stands out. The difference between the work environment and the new public setting could not be starker because the reputation or title that precedes you at the work place is missing in the public forum. In such situations, the way that one carries oneself becomes a true reflection of who you are as a person and in many ways, is representative of your position in society.

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Recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on a question on career investment. Do Managers do enough in terms of investing in the careers of their team members? Often, employees are unclear on what they are looking to achieve in their careers. While this may simply be put down as a lack of ambition, it is undeniably important for the leader to inculcate a sense of self worth where it is lacking and encourage his team to think about themselves. Now, each person is different and the classic mistake that one can easily make is to apply the same paint to every idol, so to speak. With career planning, it is simply not “one size fits all”. Very often, in India especially, we have kids in middle class families choosing between only Engineering or Medical streams of education in college. The main reason that this happens is because the previous generation (parents) have seen that these two fields are the

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