How to be a role model for those looking up to you
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” — Maya Angelou
This sentence by the American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou could summarize the kind of manager I would like to be.
For almost my entire professional career I have seen how most of the managers have tried to follow the “carrot and the stick” approach to motivate employees.
Having been managed by people who used this method, I can say that I fail to understand how this can be believed to be motivating. In fact, I sure didn’t feel more encouraged to do my job by it. I still remember how frustrated I felt when I didn’t get “the carrot” and I was punished with the “stick”, without being even given the opportunity to explain the reason for not having met the expectations. As a consequence, I continued my work with my head held low waiting for the next “carrot” or “stick”.
When I joined Adidas three years ago, I found a place where things are done differently.
So, there I was, being encouraged to take new responsibilities and challenges which would allow me to get to know a better way of doing things.
So, I was given my first challenge: I had to manage a group of people in different locations, try to change the way they worked, the methodology, and do a 360º turn to what had been done.
My first personal goal was to always avoid thinking that working together was about giving a “carrot” or a “stick”.
There were several things that I tried to apply during this time and thanks to MDE (manager development experience) I’m more aware of what my ‘manager journey’ should be.
In the first steps of our careers, we tend to focus on growing professionally thinking that success depends only on what we do by ourselves. However, I have come to understand that we can only become leaders when we help others grow professionally and when we motivate them to work together towards a common goal. This is when success really takes place.
A leader’s role is to set the stage not to perform on it
Motivation must be based on autonomy. This means that people should be given enough autonomy to feel empowered and take control of situations. The focus must be on valuing the result of their work, not the number of hours they spend sitting at their workstation.
Mastery is the key to delivering at your best.
Working on one’s knowledge and skills can lead to delivering more effective results and making more efficient use of time, improving the quality of our work. Giving people a sense of purpose is essential to let them feel how important their work is and the reason why they are carrying out their tasks
Leaders focus on building a sense of community, creating a world people want to belong to.
Trying to increase the power of believing that you can improve, is about creating the space where people feel willing, encouraged, and able to put in the hard work. This will promote opportunities for your team to think of innovative, creative, and ingenious ways to solve problems while sharing and bringing together their talents and passions. Take the time to learn about your team members’ short-term and longer-term goals. Explore ways in which you can help them reach those goals
The people you manage are your own direct reflection.
As you move into your new role, your own manager’s eyes will be on you — and how well your line managees perform can be a reflection of how effective your own leadership skills are. You must always be a role model for those looking up to you.
These are some of the key acquirements learned during MDE of which I’ll try to be more aware of and I’ll try to apply in my ‘“manager journey”.
“I have not failed, I’ve just found 10.000 ways that won’t work” — Thomas A. Edison