Should you compromise leadership for benefits?

Let your career take off with a leadership position


Published Date: 2010-08-29
Leadership League, Perspective, The Himalayan Times

What will you do if given simultaneous opportunities for a leadership position with less benefits, as opposed to a less influential position with good benefits? Will you simply choose the latter because it offers handsome remuneration?

Fundamentals like financial benefits might seem attractive in the initial phase. However, as young people get swayed away by benefits and affiliation with larger firms, they unknowingly weaken their chances of achieving leadership positions in subsequent years. Listed are some reasons why you might want to let your career take off with a leadership position irrespective of the size of the firm.

Interaction with management and influencing decision makingMostly, it is the smaller firms that offer more chances of getting involved in the management and decision making as compared to well reputed ones. Candidates have a better chance of securing higher posts, which offer higher chances of access to the management and decision making level. Choosing an easy paying and a simple job in big organisations may deprive you of the chances of interacting with the higher level, thereby minimising your chances of leadership opportunities.

Multi-disciplinary job and leadership:Leadership positions require knowledge on multi-disciplinary aspects which a smaller firm might offer. Volume of transactions and human resources play a crucial role in deriving specific and concentrated job descriptions. The larger firms are more rigid in human resource specifications, while the smaller ones are not. So if you want exposure to multi-disciplined jobs, smaller firms might be your choice.

Career ascendance and leadership positions:Monetary aspect is perhaps the primary means of judging career ascendance. But one’s leadership positions, responsibilities and access to management are just as important. You might have encountered people leaving large firms to join smaller ones, even though they might offer lower benefits. What do you think is the reason for this? Probably they find the challenges and extra responsibilities more attractive than the financial
benefits.

Simply being affiliated with reputed firms that offer handsome salary and non-financial benefits does not make one’s career track record superior. It is the responsibilities and access positions that the person holds, even if they are engaged in smaller firms that determine one’s success and ultimate job satisfaction.

Young and inexperienced

Fostering meaningful participation of young people is a process and not an event

Published date: 2010-08-15
Leadership League, Perspective, The Himalayan Times

What would you do if a young and inexperienced subordinate has to be accommodated in an important meeting? First you might think, ‘he will just occupy a seat.’ In the worst case scenario, you might just pray that ‘this youth does not divert the meeting by saying something irrelevant’ or if you are really liberal, you might think ‘this will be a good exposure for this young person.’ No matter what you think, meaningful contribution in the meeting will be an arduous task for the young one.

Initially, fostering meaningful participation of young people is a process and not an event. Just giving them an exposure might not yield results. In fact, the entire process of letting them chip in significantly will have longer positive impact on your team and most importantly on the individual.

If time permits, the following steps could help a young person contribute meaningfully to a meeting.

Let them separately prepare for the meeting: 
Let them prepare separately after sharing the meeting’s agenda. Giving guidelines and dividing the task can also help them prepare more precisely and be more productive in the meeting. Leaving the person alone will cultivate unrestricted thinking and a sense of independence.

Handing over the most daunting preparation task to the young person can also yield better results, as error rectification is possible before the final day.

Describe an issue or a problem without including cause or solution: We mostly tend to imply or even impose causes or solutions to a problem. This restricts others’ thinking, especially young people. On the other hand, just describing a problem can derive more positive impact.

Questioning about their perspective on causes and possible solutions might generate new ideas. It provides space to the young person to contribute with new perspectives.

Encourage participation in the meeting: When explaining something, just ask them to give a specific example to sustain your ideas. Give short directives on what you want them to give examples on.

Evaluate the meeting separately with the individual: Reviewing the meeting with the individual will allow them to think critically. Do not forget to ask about their impressions and feedback of your own performance at
the meeting.

Youth versus experience

Hiring young people is an opportunity not a risk

Published Date: 2010-08-01
Leadership League, Perspective, The Himalayan Times

Older managers that I have worked with in the past are reluctant to hire young people in higher posts at work despite their fitting qualifications. Many of the elder managers consider hiring them a risk which is probably a result of how youth is overlooked in our society. Moreover, we oversee the energy level they bring in to an organisation with their naïve, energetic and youthful presence.

Specific technical know-how should be the primary motivating factor for hiring. The increased significance of focused education has triggered specialised courses as compared to the situation a decade back. The mushrooming educational institutions are offering courses that mostly cater to the need of current human resource demand.

Hiring managers see employing young people as a risk. They think that professionalism and youth are polar opposites. Youth is psychologically considered a problem age as they continually battle to adjust with changing responsibilities and new commitments. If driven positively, youth is the age of value change and creativity. They have the psychological advantage to cater to external demands, if positive values are set in at the right age. They have unmatched originalities that all other age groups rarely offer. But their creativity
depends on whether they are given the opportunity to meet individual interests.

Good managers capitalise on this by providing opportunities to young people for the benefit of the organisation. Good managers respect constraints and gradually increase their responsibility level. Meaningful participation is the vital intervention point that can transform troublesome youths to productive ones. Rather than a risk, hiring young people is an opportunity that most managers might have missed.

Youth contribution

Non-participation of youth at the workplace can be compared to Nepali politics
Published date; 2010-07-11
Leadership League, Perspective, The Himalayan Times

If you ask what the root problem of Nepali politics is, the answer will be, “failure of the older generations
and lesser participation and leadership of the youth.” Apparently, Nepali politics is the most fitting case to contrast youth participation and non-participation.

However, youths are not given the chance to participate meaningfully at the workplace too.We often fall short in underlining that the workplace is also an avenue where participation of young people can be fostered in meaningful ways.

Beginning with the family, we expect the younger generations to obey and comply with the rules set by the adults. When children grow up, they face the formidable task of abiding by the rules set at colleges and workplaces. Generally, the younger generation are often looked down upon in our society, and rarely allowed to participate in major decision making activities. Their participation is often deemed as a theoretical facet and incalculable.

Participation is actually rather a process than an output. Roger Hart’s “ladder of participation” can be deemed relevant to differentiate youth participation and nonparticipation. The ladder is divided into eight rungs which can be further divided into two, based on its participatory and non-participatory features.

The non-participatory components can be compared with youth in today’s political scenario. Manipulation, decoration and tokenism are the three non-participatory rungs according to the ladder of participation.
Youth are extensively mobilised just as a tool to realise a party’s directive.

Its distinctive feature thus qualifies youth participation in Nepali politics as non-participatory. From historical and contemporary evidence too, youths have contributed largely to Nepali politics. Historical changes resulted by mobilising students, labours and youths from various walks of lives. The 2006 April uprising (Janaandholan- II) also saw enormous involvement of youths. Nonetheless, their voices are ultimately unheard.

The parties with larger segments of youths are considered more institutionalised, disregarding the meaningful participation that it should have practiced. In workplaces too, youth participation has to be scrutinised to determine the persistence of non-participatory practices. Youths are the equal contributors to an organisation’s development.

Participatory practices within an organisation enhance ownership and productivity of youths. They are not just tools to obtain organisational goals.

Involving youth in decision making for better outputs

Collective decision making and implementation have intertwined bond in any organisation as it makes the involved party more responsible and enhances the feeling of “ownership” that automatically results in effective implementation

Published date: 2010-07-04
The Leadership League, The Perspective, The Himalayantimes 

If you are wondering why “your” decisions are ineffectively executed by your young subordinates, it’s probably because of prevailing authoritative decision making procedures. Your subordinates may want to implement “our” decision than “your’s”.

Collective decision making is a fundamental tool in non-authoritative management leadership. Authoritative management heavily relies on just getting the jobs done and humans are just tools to achieve the end. On the other hand, team management emphasises on tasks as well as interpersonal relationships.

Collective decision making and implementation have an intertwined bond in any organisation. Collective decision making makes the involved party more responsible and enhances the feeling of “ownership” that automatically results in effective implementation. Youth are usually ignored during the decision making processes mostly because they lack experience. Lower the age of subordinates, lower is the chance of them getting involved in decision making. In common practice, youths are the ones who get to contribute the least in any organisation.

Thus their participation is not considered “worthwhile” to influence decisions. Quality decision is guaranteed if a manager takes decisions after consulting subordinates. Listening and not hearing is the prerequisite to the collective decision making. It reduces the chance of impractical decisions as they are based on realistic information.

As far as possible, decisions should be taken in front of subordinates. It will make them believe that they are being counted. It also permits rethinking over the decisions, if the purpose has been deviated. You may be able to retain young employees for longer period of time and even encourage them to work more diligently just by following participatory decision making. We value monetary and other visible benefits as the most important motivating factors.

However, qualitative procedures like collective decision making gratify the employees with vital experiences that are rarely offered by any organisations. It also gradually crafts a sense of belonging with the organisation
as the young employees feel they have equal share in the decision making.

Ultimately, the decisions are implemented effectively as they are equally responsible in making the choice. It will surely make you “their” favourite line manager as they feel being reckoned.

When to intervene?

Interaction with peer groups during late childhood and adolescence lead to leadership and teambuilding

(Published date: 2010-06-13, Sunday)
Leadership League, Perspective, The Himalayan Times

Sanam Chitrakar

We occasionally come across young people at work who are self-motivated to lead their team. They leave everybody wondering when or how they learned to assume a leader's role. The answer is, the fundamental development factors during one's formative years contribute to meaningful participation, thus generating
quality leadership. In fact, adolescence is the most suitable age to intervene for quality youth
leadership.

Nepal has experienced many changes lately on youth fronts. Business houses are eager to hire youths because of their capacity to adjust easily, technological know-how and willingness to learn. Few dynamic youths are even at the helms of leading business organisations and enterprises.

A noted Danish-German psychoanalyst Erik H Erikson characterised adolescent as the psychosocial crisis of identity and role confusion. The transitional age from childhood to adulthood is marked by attitudinal and behavioural changes and above all the search for their own identity. This is also the age of increased peer group influence, changing social behaviours and emergence of new values.

Interaction with peer groups during late childhood and adolescence lead to leadership and teambuilding which can be either negative or positive, depending upon the group.With proper guidance, however, a peer group could teach adolescents to be independent, develop a sense of loyalty to the group and cooperation with other members.

They also learn to conform to the standard rules and carry out responsibilities. This is probably the first lesson of management that human beings learn.

Adolescence is also the very period when life goals are set. Motivation for fulfilment of one's goal is more important than other external factors, including income and benefits. This helps them to take informed decisions that would eventually affect their lives. In our society, adolescents rarely have any control over their own lives as they are mostly indoctrinated and deprived of the choice to pursue a career and education that interests them.

Although meaningful participation is imperative and a prerequisite for quality leadership, the primary step towards attaining this goal would be acquiring adequate and correct information and interventions at the
right time of life. To build leadership qualities, we should intervene when they are adolescents, as it has lasting
positive impacts.