(This one is special to me, as this is my first published work, It started as a small work on this topic which led me to win the best paper award at IHRD's Bangalore HR summit in December 2012. Later on IT got published in NHRD's HRD Newsletter June 2013)
Rahul joined the bank at the age of 24, as a fresh MBA in finance & Marketing, full of energy, dynamism, positivity and passion. All these qualities in the bank were collectively termed as a single adjective –'Aggressive'.
In six months only he became the most successful Relationship Manager for the Business banking division of the bank. The year ended on a new high, when his appraisal brought him the top rating and brought him a seat in 'The Talent Pool' of the bank.
Raghu, Sr. Vice President & National Sales Manager for Business Banking identified the potential in Rahul and decided to take him to a new level in the new financial year. In Rahul, Raghu was able to see his past. The way he joined from the B school 15 years back and set all new performance benchmarks for newcomers. Rahul is similar, infact better than that, as the market scenario is much more competitive now, than what it was in 1995.
Raghu has nominated Rahul as 'Hi-Pot' (High Potential) in the talent pool and now the talent management team has chalked out next 3 years growth plan for him along with learning inputs. An MDP at IIM Ahmedabad in the first quarter, followed by a Leadership & change management workshop at Mumbai by an eminent professor of a US university in 3rd Quarter and if with this, if he continues to maintain his high performance, he is all set to become Area Sales Manager next year. Beyond this some advance learning inputs in the next two years and he will be set to move to a larger role in another 2 years.
Raghu was happy and excited to find out his mentee and after scaling all possible highs in his career, now he is all set to carve for a new role for himself of 'The Mentor' of a young talent.
The year went positively as planned. MDP, Workshop & Rahul's consistent good performance. The appraisal this time along with top rating brought him the promotion and on top of it all, the new role for the man. Now Rahul was the youngest Area Sales Manager for the Business banking division.
6 months down the line Raghu was sitting with Jaya, Head Line HR for Business banking at the cafeteria, worried about a complaint they received against Rahul by one of his subordinates Anuradha. In addition to this Raghu has already noticed and was worried about the declining performance of the area managed by Rahul.
Anuradha was one of the 3 Sales Managers reporting to Rahul. She was almost of his age, with 3 years of experience she has joined the bank 6 months ago from a competing organization to fill in the position vacated by Rahul. The other 2 team members Ankit and Ajay who are freshers, joined the bank same year & 1 Year ago respectively.
While Ankit looks up to Rahul as his short term role model, Ajay has a little discomfort with his way of dealing with the team and Anuradha is extremely uncomfortable working under the leadership of Rahul since her initial days.
Raghu & Jaya felt about their discomfort as typical peer discord and jealously towards a quick gainer. But the mail from Anuradha was a matter of worry.
Anuradha has warned to quit if things do not improve in coming days. She has highlighted few aspects which were the key discomfort for her as well as for other teammates.
- Rahul is micro managing the team big time. He expects the team to be in office or at work till late hours every day.
- Calling each member of the team to office each Saturday (which is a weekly off) is a routine.
- He expects every team member to work the way he used to do and with the same style every time.
- At times he appears to be competing with his own subordinates and there were examples where he seeks pleasure in winning against his own reportees in front of Senior Managers or in front of customers for petty aspects.
- As a Manager he clearly failed to understand the functional & personal needs of his team and largely appeared like a school teacher who wants all students be like the best one.
- The matter of concern was his 'Aggressive' leadership or team management where he constantly appears as an autocratic manager.
While Raghu & Jaya were still trying to figure out what went wrong Suman joined them in cafeteria. Suman is Head -Corporate Communications for the Bank and takes care of Internal Employee communications too. She has selected Vinay from the last Management Trainee Batch as her teammate. Vinay is very creative person. He writes a blog, he is an avid reader and he is hands on with several photo & print editing softwares. Once he joined, The Bank was no more depended on vendors to design their Monthly News letter and his eye for creative detail has helped the bank to extract better out of each agency.
The challenge Suman is facing with Vinay is, his sort of indiscipline. He often comes late at office, takes so many breaks, some of them are really long (as he often moves out to the nearby Art gallery, post lunch) and has been spotted plying online games, digging up social networking sites and updating his blog during work hours.
Suman has tried pointing these things out to Vinay at times, but what made her mellow down in her argument were his accomplishments. He spends several night outs to complete the news letter, he jumps into a critical agency issue and turn it in the bank's favor etc.
The problems on that table of the cafeteria are not uncommon. These or similar issues are often around Gen Y people, however has never been addressed or identified as a single problem because of different outlook of each scenario, e.g. Rahul's case can be looked as a typical organizational fitment issue and Vinay's case can be viewed as an issue of irregular routine.
On the face of it Flexi-timing looks like the solution of Vinay's case and some team building activity followed by a Leadership training programs look like the solution of Rahul's situation.
However the core issue in both cases is the key characteristic difference between Gen Y people and Gen X system. A Talent management system or routine of Gen X days will naturally conflict with Gen Y workforce and is not going to work. In the long run the worst outcome can be, 'the strength of the Gen Y becoming their Weakness', as highlighted in the above mentioned examples.
And this happens mostly when we try to develop them for a larger role or we try to fit them in a position where (we think) that their capabilities will be challenged to enhance.
It usually happens at times when they are given a new & larger role related to their current function or vertical but does not have much to do as per their core competency. For example a good performing sales person who in his role really enjoys client interaction, the pitching & deal structuring part but a promotion takes him up to the role of Area Sales Manager where he ends up doing 'Man Management' rather than 'client management' in spite of being in so called same function (sales) at a higher rung.
However the most difficult part of this challenge is its identification. Because-
- It never appears as a primary issue.
- It often results as work place discomfort & friction
- The worst outcome of this challenge is, it reduces the trust in Gen Y manpower and makes their success appear as a mere coincidence or a one time wonder.
How can we tackle this?
It is really challenging to handle an employee or a team who is always hurried for results, hungry for more and is 'cool' (read Laid back) and Alert (read passionate) at the same time. But you often see this type of individuals in sports. Their planning is dynamic; it changes with the course of the game. They shout, they laugh, they celebrate, they fall and they rise and they fight again. They win, They lose and they still shake hands and move on to the next game.
If you try to list down key characteristics of successful and fair Sportspersons from any team sports you will end up with following traits invariably-
- Dynamic
- Confident
- Goal Oriented
- Multicultural
- Civic Minded/Level Headed / Manages their temperament quickly
- Play for Sense of Joy
- Play not only for Money but for a sense of achievement Also
Surprisingly if you look at the Key characteristics of Gen Y, they are not different. In fact beyond characteristics, the behavior, the attitude and even the team dynamics of a pure Gen Y team are very similar to that of a Sports team.
They too are-
- Dynamic (Sometimes negatively interpreted as unstable)
- Confident (at times perceived as over confident)
- Goal Oriented (always look for the outcome/ gain)
- Multicultural
- Civic Minded/Level Headed / Manages their temperament quickly
- Work for Sense of Joy
- Work not only for Money but for a sense of achievement (or Identity) Also
This finding gives us a eureka moment to look at all the sports coaching techniques and methods as a vast tool to choose for development of Gen Y individuals.
Even without going into those rigorous sports coaching techniques, few simple inspirations from the playground as listed below, can really help us turnaround the work place where Gen Y is 'playing' a major role.
Flat Structure: In a sports team everyone reports to the captain. Not even new entrants in the team reports to vice Captain or other senior players. Similarly Gen Y also prefers flat reporting structure. Even if they are in an organization with multilevel hierarchy, they prefer to be guided, led and mentored by one person they have an easy access to. Flat structure ensures the Strategic alignment and focused approach towards goal. All they need is a Captain instead of a Manager.
The playing Captain: Rarely in sports you have "non Playing Captain". A Captain is also a player in the game and apart from captaincy he also has to play like just another player in the team. Gen Y wants their Managers to run with them and not only instruct them on how to run or how much to run. Moreover sports world is full of examples when a Captain is playing as reliable partner, the results are surprisingly positive. For example you must have come across following statistics on any of the social networking sites-
Who was at the Non striker's end when Yuvraj smashed 6 sixes in a row?
Who was at the Non striker's end when Sachin scored 200* in ODI?
Who was at the Non striker's end when Sachin scored his 50th test century?
Or, who was at the Non striker's end when Sachin scored his 13000th test run?
The answer is M S Dhoni. But the point to note is that in all of these scenarios he was the Captain in that game and was playing firmly from the other end. Giving his partner the required confidence to play such ambitious and risky shots. Similarly the manager of a Gen Y team need to dirty his hands but need not score all himself, his presence and company in the field will give the required assurance and confidence to achieve more.
Openness & Sharing: Once you are in filed, there is nothing to hide. No close group discussion. No hidden agendas within the team and no e-mails or paperwork too. You need to 'talk' to each other, whether it is in the form of a shout or scowl or eye contact. Without this you cannot play along. All plans and strategies are shared with all the players in the field. Because you never know when one has to stretch himself at boundary to save 4 runs from a missed catch at slip. The idea is 'A team huddle is more important than the board meeting, when the game is on.'
Gen Y also likes to communicate and connect in the same manner. Instead of receiving memos or e-mailers about strategy or attending a daylong session on the same they would prefer to discuss the same directly with their captain on the go.
Though it's a team game but everyone is unique: Here is the catch. Though it is a team and there are largely 3-4 job profiles only e.g. in a cricket team, batsman, bowler & Wicket keeper. But each batsman has unique positioning depending upon their skill set. Some of them goes as opener, some has to be in middle order. Also amongst bowlers there are further fragmentation s spinners, pacers etc. That spatiality within each profile gives a sports person a USP in his career and positioning in the team.
Similarly in Gen Y each and every member has some unique quality under the common skill set they have for a particular job profile. It is captain & coach's responsibility to play each and every player in the best way. All they want is not to lose their core skill while playing as a team, rather they want their uniqueness to get noticed and become a ladder for their growth. Sports have proven that it is very much possible.
If this is taken care of, it will ensure their interest in game forever and will result in what we call 'employee engagement' at work.
Grow on Your strength: In a cricket team for a batsman to grow in his career, he has to ensure consistent good batting performance. With which he can grow up to become as the best batsman, earn more even can earn more than what the captain earns) and retire as a batsman itself.
Unlike a typical corporate structure where if you bat well as a reward you are promoted to a new role where you have to Bat as well as bowl. If you survive doing this the next level adds the expectation of being a wicketkeeper too, needless to mention your fielding performance is always on check and if you keep doing good with all these responsibilities you will be promoted as the Captain. Where your core job will be to manage entire team, its performance and planning strategy. You need not do all the dirty work you had been doing so far, now you can guide people to do so.
However Sports inspires us to believe that the epitome of career is not becoming the captain or manager but a successful sportsman is one who always delivers great performance with his core skills, in core area of performance. In sports captaincy or coaching its self become another skill set, just like Bating, bowling, fielding etc.
Gen Y too has similar instinct, where they do not want to get detached from the job which they loves to do, They would love to enhance their skill set, learn new things but still they perform their best when their core competencies get nurtured in a way to give them growth in their career.
Sports give us this great inspiration to plan the new talent management framework for Gen Y where their strengths remain as the backbone of their performance.
Earn More than the Captain:
The biggest worry on a young employee's mind is his growth and remuneration. Everyone wants to grow and earn more in life. The present corporate framework inspires one to always look for promotion which in turn will bring in better remuneration and authority. They often innocently trade off their likings in the pursuit of growth. And we end up having sellers craving to become managers craving to become strategist craving to become CEOs. And in this journey we also witness performance drop and engagement loss.
Again sports here give us a model where your earnings are directly proportional to your contribution and performance irrespective of the position you hold. You need not be at the top of the hierarchy to earn the most. Here you can see the best player earning more than the captain, or manager or even coach at times.
This model if applied to Gen Y will give us better retention, better expectation management and also let us choose the Captain easily, as the race will be less crowded and we need not keep the captain's seat blocked for the Senior most fellow but for the most eligible and interested candidate.
In the end:
Taking inspiration from Sports gives us a fresh perspective to manage Gen Y and given the characteristic similarities between Gen Y and Sports team, it will work. However this thought still leaves us with few questions as life span of a sports career is much shorter than that of a corporate career, so will it be really effective strategy in long run? Or how an organization which is running in classical form adapt to this new model quickly, which talks about so many radical changes?
In spite of all the questions we can really give this method a try in small work groups or teams. Especially where Gen Y population is high in numbers. After all it's all about being a good sport!!!
…….
Luv
VT
