Your Sorting Hat: On avoiding micromanagement, skills for dreams and an ideal work day
Career Tuesday
Careers, Life and Questions (Dec 14, 2021)
Wish you a Happy Career Tuesday!
30 years ago, on this date, I was commissioned as an officer in the Indian Army. Like every soldier and veteran, I was lucky to have an opportunity to learn and then share universal lessons on leadership that apply to any group of people.
3 Career Ideas
I.
"What would be an extraordinary result in your current task?
Success follows when you deliver extraordinary outcomes in ordinary tasks."
II.
"Train your team. Learn to delegate. Free up your time. Move to the next level.
Both your team and you grow the fastest when you can delegate your entire job."
III.
"Set up a daily or weekly update habit with your bosses.
This will stop micromanagement and earn you credit instead."
2 Life Quotes from Books
I.
Malcolm Gladwell, Canadian author who shares deep insights in social sciences, discusses the poor decisions we make when we judge people quickly, in his book - Talking To Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know :
"Pronin calls this phenomenon the “illusion of asymmetric insight.” She writes: The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly."
Source: Book: Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
II.
Will Smith, Oscar winning actor and film producer, in his autobiography - Will - offers inspiration and an answer for people with dreams beyond their current abilities :
"The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft."
Source: Book: Will by Will Smith
1 Question
Imagine an ideal day at work in the future. Are you choosing the right job/ boss/ training/ project - that will get you there?
If you enjoyed that, please share this email with others.
Sign up here to receive this email every week or read longer career articles here.
Until next week,
Devashish Chakravarty
Author of YourSortingHat
Columnist for Careers at The Economic Times