Here is an important question: What do you think influences your performance at the workplace? Question looks simple, but answers could be many. The usual factors that influence the workplace performance are: role clarity, amenities, quality of colleagues, cooperation across various departments, compensation, incentives, my personal competence and motivation. In addition to all the above factors, there is another important game-changing factor: the type of leader who leads you! The style of your leader can have a huge bearing on many of the above factors and therefore can be seen as an overarching influence on your workplace performance. Leader’s impact on your performance: Let us consider the case of Ranjan Mitra. He has about twelve years of work experience and reasonably successful in career so far. He comes across as a very cordial, articulate and competent professional. For three years he has been in the current job and since the time he joined, there have been several changes in the organization. One of the prominent changes happened to be the change of reporting manager. Since the time new manager Mohan joined the organization, it has not been the same for Ranjan. Initially, he thought he needed to change his way of working since Mohan has a different style of working. Ranjan made earnest efforts to align with Mohan. If the conversations over the last six months are any indication, then Ranjan’s efforts did not click. Mohan has been giving feedback to Ranjan on the need for faster execution, greater assertion and result orientation. Initially, Ranjan was explaining all the bottlenecks in the system and how he was trying to work around the same. But he noticed that Mohan was least interested to listen to all reasons; in fact, in one of the team meetings, Mohan termed the reasons for delay as ‘excuses’ and he said, “I hate excuses!”. Ranjan felt very small in front of everyone. It took a few days for Ranjan to regroup himself and took the challenge of turning around the things. One more delay; one more session with Mohan; and one more demotivating conversation. Now the question that is lingering on Ranjan’s mind is: Can I ever succeed under Mohan’s leadership? Should I even make a try? Or is there any fundamental mismatch? That led him to ponder over a deeper question: what kind of leader possibly will bring the best out of me? He looked back at his career and broadly could think of all those distinct leaders that he worked or watched. Keep tracking this space to know about different leaders with whom Ranjan worked previously and which leader brought the best out of him. Excerpts from the article – Who Owns Your CareerBy: Dr.Raj, Published in HR Mirror, Hans India.Follow Dr.Raj on Twitter @drraj29.
