Troubled Water

Oct 10 2015 It was an important day in my life. On that day at 5:30 IST, I had my first call with my client manager as a lead. My role in the organization I recently joined was to lead the IT operations team which works for an investment bank. I was excited about this role. It was the first in my life, I was asked to lead a team. Though bit tensed, I was all ready for the first meeting with the client manager.

Good Morning Toastmaster and Dear guest,

Here is a glimpse of my leadership journey

5:30 I dialed in..

“Hello, Don, Jaise here from RIM team”

“Someone from RIM team, that’s surprising. What made you to join this call Jaise. I never ever had any representation from your team in this weekly governance call.”

“Don I will represent team going forward”

“Let’s see. I come back to you”

After completing the review with other team Don called me

“Jaise”… “JaiSE” … “JAISE”

 “I know this, that’s the habit of this team. They just disappear, no accountability. I tried to reach out to this f** team many times but no response. I gave up Now I working to revoke the contract with this team.”

All this time was trying unmute, Re-plugging the code and trying everything I know to fix the faulty phone but all in vain

Devastated, At that moment I realized that my journey on this leaderSHIP  is in troubled water. To add, most of the team members doesn’t had much IT experience.

Much before I joined the organization, I was on a different journey through books to find the meaning of my life. The book, “Man’s search for the meaning of life” which I read in that expedition came for my rescue. The author emphasis having a purpose for what all you do and it will give a meaning. Why don’t apply the same, have a Purpose, and find meaning in what I do and what my team does. Being new to Banking domain terms like Credits, Rates, Forex, Equity were all Greek and Latin to me. Yes, that’s where I must start, learn what are these. Thanks to YouTube and Business analysts of the bank, I was able to understand it. A wonderful business. What if my team is also as motivated as I am? The next few weeks were a learning journey for them as well as to me. At the end, we were able to see the bigger picture and was able to identify what is the role we, as a team, play in this bigger scheme of things. How does what we do matter or impact the business.

Working closely with them and sitting along with them in calls pointed out that, Some are technically strong, some other are not so. And same was the case with non-technical especially on communication. I sat with each one of them to hear their concerns to identify what they are good at and in which area they need improvement. With the feedback, we arranged a few sessions technical and non-technical to cater to the needs of the team.

I thought I solved all problems, hmm.. no, One other  problem I faced was on the people front. There were not many takers for the nightshifts. Some just mark sick leave when asked to come on the night shift. I don’t want to escalate this behavior to higher management, instead, I called everyone to a meeting. We discussed the concerns, we listened, we list down the suggestions. Finally, we came up with a plan with the consent of all in the team. This was implemented form the very next week.  

Friends,

What I tried to do was when I put the hat of a leader can be put in three points.

Finding the Purpose

Emotional connect with the team.

Openness

For me the purpose was very much important, that aligned the team to a single goal, that helped the team members to come up with new ideas and solutions.

I was able to relate to my team members who don’t have much IT experience to handle a critical project and obviously of not handling tough clients. With frequent communication with the team and with individuals, specific needs of the team were identified and respond to it. With openness, I created a team as one cohesive unit.

And all those efforts paid off

2 quarters later I got a letter from Don

“Jaise, I wish I could have got you in the team much earlier”

Thank you