Engineer

2 Pages 377 Words

The most important lesson I learnt was at my last consulting assignment when I seized the opportunity to take initiative in a team that was operating as a “Leaderless Team” due to lack of development manager. I learnt that people don’t at first follow worthy ideas but they follow worthy leader who promote worthwhile ideas. More often than not people will change their direction or their aims if they believe in the credibility of the leader. Having an understanding of that has changed my whole approach to leading. As a leader to accomplish the same I strive to build credibility first and forge relationship with my team-members so they buy into me first then only my vision has a chance of becoming reality.
Despite being an outsider I was able to build relationship with the employees. I believe that genuine acts of caring uplift the spirits and draw people forward. For instance when the team had to meet a crucial deadline I volunteered to help a team-member who needed to leave work early to take care of his infant son. On another instance I helped resolve an impasse created when a team member could not communicate effectively to the database administrator the design criteria behind a change request. I believe cooperation is merely working together in agreement but collaboration is much more than that. Collaboration is working together aggressively wherein each person brings something to the table that adds value to the relationship and synergy to the team. Additionally, by not being suspicious of teammates and adopting the mind-set where you complete rather than compete with teammates the team can achieve stretch goals. With that mindset when I noticed that the whole team was experiencing difficulties while following a software development process including the tool that facilitated the process she cataloged problems and investigated the traditional practices and proposed solutions to enhance productivity. This camaraderie helped me ...