Recently, I volunteered to give conduct a short sharing to the new participants under Dynamic Leadership (DL) - back in my day, it was called Managerial Excellence (ME). This course was designed for newly appointed managers over a course of 4-months, with a mix of in-person classroom sessions, virtual classroom, and assignments. To get participants fired up, during the virtual kickoff, organizers at PLC place a slot for DL alumni - past participants who’ve attended previous sessions - to address these new leaders & set the learning into context in relation to the organization’s aspirations.
It was an excellent program, and so the moment I graduated from my ME course last November 2023, I immediately reached out to the PLC team - guys, let me be your alumni!
I’ve always wanted this opportunity to reach out to my fellow managers, to share some honest insights and hopefully inspire them throughout this journey.
Some key messages I shared:
1. Congratulations! The organization has seen some qualities in you to deem you worthy to entrust you with handling and the most important resource of the organization: Our people. So let’s make it count
2. My own struggles as a new manager - the message I wanted to send to them was, it isn’t easy! I faced immense struggles right off the gate, and the challenges keep coming. Being overwhelmed, confronting impostor syndrome, questioning yourself if you’re doing the right thing, facing ruthless criticism, feeling hopelessly at a dead end.. if you’ve ever felt this way, I’ve got news: This is normal.
Yes, it’s tough.
But as a Leader once shared with us, “I have good news and I have bad news”.
The bad news: It’s going to get TOUGHER. The good news is: You’re going to get BETTER.
The key to thrive as a leader, isn’t to fret and lose hope, but rather, to embrace the future possibility that we will grow to adapt, and expand our abilities to handle greater challenges!
3. Let’s BE the change:
Let’s be honest. Chances are, some of us might have had (or are currently having) leaders who aren’t quite “model examples”. Maybe our leaders are poor listeners, don’t practice psychological safety, are terrible at giving, seeking or receiving feedback, lack the courage to act, just don’t care about our development, or bootlickers who “kiss up, kick down”.
Now, we can either look at this situation like whining cynical netizens, or we can step up to break the cycle, to do things differently.
As our leader shared a recent townhall event: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
The company didn’t appoint us as leaders to perpetuate the problem. They appointed us to be part of the solution.
Now that we are leaders, this is our chance to make a difference in our capacity.
So, let’s step up, and BE that change: together.
We got this, guys!
No comments:
Post a Comment