“Become Leaders of People and not Managers of tasks”

There was a time when the term “Manager” was easily separable from that of a “Leader”. His or her primary responsibilities involved: following top management orders, organizing and delegating the tasks to subordinates, coordinating with team members & analysing the team results, finally ensure that the tasks get done, and meet the expectation of the Management. The core of any supervising role is that of successful accomplishment of any given task – Efficiency being the key factor and focus. With the changing concept of Management and Leadership, take a step forward and experience the magic of what is called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), ‘ NLP The new Leadership development tool ’.

With the growth and change in the organization styles, value is now associated to the knowledge in people. Thus, the terms Management and Leadership are inked together. They are words which are rather symbiotic and complement each other, than, just functioning in their respective domains. Interestingly, most or rather all organizations in the present day expect their managers to manage people in such a manner that they not only accomplish the given task but also exhibit management and leadership qualities. With the rise of knowledge, ‘one does not manage people’ but ‘lead people’.

Having said so, we expect the leadership group to give up on their rigid methodologies, one amongst those being the age old practice of grading mechanism. Currently, following the trend “The Manager”, is equipped with various tools and techniques which he/she uses to judge the effectiveness of his/her employees; Performance Evaluation or Appraisal being one of them.

As a part of this age old traditional ritual, generally manager’s approach has been to provide ‘feedback’ to employees, where the employees are hardly able to distinguish between the provided ‘Feedback’ with that of criticism. Most interestingly, the compensation that we further offer an employee on an annual basis is an outcome of the given ‘Feedback’. The thought is primarily based on rating and grading each person, in alignment with the past actions of an employee, for that particular year, which were a result of specific situations.

Most managers blindly follow this practice, and forget that every action of the employee is based on a specific situation. During the process managers end up making the belief of most employees stronger, that the appraisal mechanism is organised to point out the flaws in their actions.  Managers also have a habit to hold the employee accountable for all that he/she has done without analysing the actual reason behind his/her actions.  Generally managers are not only crippled with the tools but are also quite rigid with the process and protocols.  Also they lack the adequate amount of knowledge and reasoning required to handle a particular situation.  People management is a skill, and it needs to be developed.  Some managers have great people management skills, some learn over time, and there are some who don’t want to improve.

Discussing flaws and coining it as a performance improvement technique must be eradicated with a much mature technique which follows a constructive methodology and is called ‘FeedForward’.  The concept of Marshall Goldsmith’s FeedForward Tool can be brought into action when managers choose to act as leaders, where, the goal not only lies in the accomplishment of a task, but also focuses on bringing out the efficiency and effectiveness of an employee. It is here that the onus of improved efficiency and quality, is shifted to people, and not restricted only to the supervisor of the task. The idea behind this would be to help employees analyse the situation, reason out their actions and facilitate them in improving their future performance.

FeedForward is a continuous process where people can be groomed for their future performance based on their own assessment and team members around them, of how to improve and perform better. The desired outcome should hence be employee engagement, sense of growth and development, facilitation; Thereby turning the everyday workers, to, engaged workplace super stars. The summed up efforts that are based on the objectives will drive extraordinary business results. This would be the beginning of the evolution of a Leader from a manager.

The question now lies how can NLP The new Leadership development tool be used in identifying the areas of concern and thereby improve the effectiveness of the managers? Neuro Linguistic Program or NLP, as it is commonly known, is a technique that helps you change your state of mind and eventually your behaviour. The methodology talks about the concepts that are built on the fundamental dynamics of mind and its language, further, their impact on us, when put together.  Along with many other benefits of NLP, NLP helps in understanding how language plays a big part in communication, and ensures enhanced communication among teams, facilitated by the manager/leader who is leading the team. Powered by these conceptualised knowledge, a leader can tune their performance for higher levels of achievement.

Generally we try to come up with the solution to an issue by judging it apparently, and, eventually we eliminate the areas of concern that might be underlying the problem.  NLP helps managers and leaders to develop their sensory acuity (usage of senses to be more aware of environment) skills and help them take stock of things in a better manner, and ensures that it arouse their awareness on identifying the activities that goes on beneath the surface of the problem, thereby helping them see the entire scenario ‘from a bird’s eye view’.

Most Managers have a definite thought of their goals and achievements, however at times they are unable to deliver their best. This might be because of many reasons: Beliefs, Conflicting values, capability, identity level crisis, or operating environment in the organization.  NLP helps them identify the area/s of concern and accordingly decide the plan of action.

NLP The new Leadership development tool, is the buzz word in the corporate sector for behaviour level change programs or leadership development skills programs.  NLP as a methodology helps managers to connect with their teams better, and helps them to create an atmosphere, in which, the teams they lead, can prosper and achieve.

Do not restrict your leadership skills to an organization or to people. Let the Manager in you evolve with the golden touch of NLP; Empower yourself. As Managers, we are aware of ‘where we want to be?’ or ‘what do we want?’ but interestingly NLP tells you ‘How you can achieve it?’

If you want to shine as a leader get started with NLP, ‘ NLP The new Leadership development tool ’.

Post Credit: Dhriti Pramanick, NLP Practitioner & Leadership Coach (Mumbai)