Rambling on... again..

“A manager typically spends 40% of his/her time in resolving conflicts within the team” – resonates very closely to my position at work. And am sure with a lot of others too. However whats different is how I chose to address this – Very directly. Very very directly. I recently conducted a team session for my direct reportees – away from work and more importantly away from their phones and laptops. The day started with a lot of anxiety as the team came in with all kinds of fears in their minds. I guess the pre session introspection advice I had sent out to the team kind of made them think the day was ging to be full of finger pointing and shaming each other. I realised that most people equate straight talk with rude talk. Hence here’s my advice to any manager who believes their team needs a moment to stop and reflect. 1.        Be very very clear in your head about the end objective of the session – it should be about ‘Enabling’ and not only ‘Moti...

I am out visiting my family and A calls to say he’s getting free earlier and will get home before me. I get asked ‘Oh now you’ll need to leave early too’ – actually not in a question sense, more like a statement. I set up a girly evening with friends and decide to host it at home. A is home at that time – and am asked ‘Oh shouldn’t we ask him to join us? He will feel bad.’ Now the point of all these questions is that if the man of the house is free – the woman i.e. me – should make myself available to be around him. Lets visit another scenario observed - Everytime I travel on work, I get asked ‘Oh how will R manage?’ – without an exception. Every single time. Whether am going for 1 day or 4. And no – this is never asked to the man of the house. I am wondering why is there an inherent assumption that the poor guy is incapable of looking after himself or HIS child or HIS house? I mean, give the soul a break. He’s been educated the same as me. He’s been brought up to be a s...