‘The NEST’
■ Mayur Kalbag is an Indian Corporate Leadership Coach, Corporate Trainer and author who regularly does corporate training for businesses in Fiji. He can be contacted via email:
As you read the title of this column the first thing that may have come into your mind may have been that this column may be about a bird’s nest or something like that!
But what I would like you to understand is that this particular nest is not of a bird but a nest of the Manager and this nest is slightly different from that which a bird builds.
This particular nest created by a manager is fundamentally a place where he or she recognizes or more appropriately identifies the right kind of people from his team.
He tries to understand the potential in them and puts them in the nest and the main purpose of doing this is to be able to then develop them towards opening their potential and simultaneously helping them develop themselves in the specific areas of Professional attributes.
The nest is also a place where the manager or the leader creates a sort of a pool of people for the activity of ‘Nurturing’ and from that nest he guides and mentors those potential and talented people to the point where they begin to fly out of the nest by which I mean that they start utilizing their potential and delivering excellent results.
A-Team
In fact another perspective to this is the creation of what is known as the A-Team. But to create this A-Team the manager needs to awaken the R! which is Recognise.
Recognize- The manager is not someone who just does his own work. His most important function as is actually to recognize the most effective; less effective and the least effective people in his team and this recognizing process can be done based upon the two key parameters which are Competency and Character.
Competency is basically about the professional ability of that team member to perform his or her job with the highest levels of excellence.
Character on the other hand is about the Attitude and behavior of that individual towards his work as well as towards his colleagues too! Based upon this assessment the manager is able to understand his team and through this understanding he should be able to categorize his team into three groups which are the ATeam.
B- Team and the C-team. And then what? Well! He then must prepare the nest…not for the A-team but for the B-and probably more importantly for the C- team.
The creation of the ‘nest’ is therefore not just a mechanical creation of just some physical place where people can rest or something but it is most importantly the creation of a Pool of People with Potential which you as a manager will help them channelize for their own development and growth and which therefore will also benefit the organization. For the manager the first step is creating of the A, B and the C teams and then he must start developing a New NEST.
Managers must develop in their teams especially in their B and their C teams the attitude of Never give up. Explore- another important aspect for the manager is to explore the hidden potential and talent of his team members. Share- Managers must and can develop their teams by the process of ‘SHARING’.
Let us now open the NEW NEST!
Dear readers, the NEST also stands for some important activities or functions that a manager must execute for the betterment of his team and also for the development of their professional as well as personal performance and therefor the NEST also can be understood for the four specific and highly developmental attributes that he must activate for himself and also for his team in the nest
■ Never give up attitude- Managers must develop in their teams especially in their B and their C teams the attitude of Never give up. Many of the people in your nest may have had had pitfalls or failures and that sometimes can make them lose their Never give up attitude or also known as the attitude of DETERMINATION. The N of the nest therefore means the manner in which the leader of the team motivates his team to re-develop this attitude and become more inspired to not give up easily despite pitfalls or disappointments!
■ Explore- another important aspect for the manager is to explore the hidden potential and talent of his team members.
Many a times the leader or manager is so caught up in his own work that he fails to see the amazing talents or aspects of his own team members and hence he must now explore new talents and professional competencies of his team. There could be someone from his team which had been working in the sales department but at the back office and only when the manager explores more about this person he realizes that this person also has the talent or strength of courageously interacting with external customers without any hesitation. The term Explore really means searching for hidden strengths. This does not mean that all explorations about the respective team members will be successful but still it is surely an important effort of a manager towards wanting to find out more about his team members.
■ Share- Managers must and can develop their teams by the process of ‘SHARING’. They must begin to selflessly share their knowledge and along with it also share their experiences with their team members. By doing this, not only the B and C teams but also the A team gets to learn and through the learning they begin to develop their mental maturity in regards to their own professional challenges.
Hence, on a regular basis the process of relevant sharing must be done by the managers or leaders with their respective teams. They must also remember that knowledge need not be in the context of only work.
The sharing can be of things related to LIFE as whole too and in fact more things can be learnt by them through the sharing process about life rather than just about the work only!
■ Training- Finally the nest of the manager will be completely successful when the manager or leader starts to train his teams either by himself or by sending them for specific trainings or also by inviting trainers to visit the nest or rather visit the organization and conduct the trainings.Training is a powerful way of helping the team and its members learn new skills albeit Technical, Functional or even as importantly Behavioral skills.
The NEST therefore is not just a bird’s nest but it also is not some blank and boring space or place for the Managers to put his team members into. The NEST is truly an ‘OPPORTUNITY SPACE’ where people can really develop and influence themselves positively towards their growth and the growth of the organization too!