This year we picked #VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) to ensure team’s development on emotional Intelligence, Self-awareness & Fulfillment to have positive impact to team & business. While the emphasis is on equipping the team members with the necessary skills which will help them perform their duties better, there is also a sincere effort towards making this a very enjoyable and open exercise for everyone so that each one of them can express themselves and maximize their learning.
In my recent travel across the country & meetings with different team member and during Pep talks meaning & concept of GROW was explained to team which stands for four values viz. Gratitude, Respect, Ownership and Willingness , hope you find worth going through this & will be happy to see your feedback on this write up please :Let me elaborate each one of these in detail:
Gratitude – So what is gratitude? Is it a mere thanksgiving or feeling thankful towards any person? Or is it something much bigger!! To quote a famous philosopher, “thankfulness is beginning of gratitude, completion of thankfulness is gratitude, thankfulness is expressed in words and gratitude is shown in acts.” When we feel grateful towards a person/organisation it shows in our behaviour & work.
So to whom do we owe this gratitude? Is it really necessary to explicitly show this gratitude in today’s world where there is a rat race and cut throat competition? The answer is a big “Yes”.While there may be so many people around us to whom we should be grateful, we must start by expressing it first to the one and only “the Almighty” GOD for just making us what we are today.
Then comes our family and friends, the sole reason that we as an individual are able to perform at work is because of the efforts that they make to get us up and running each day. The sacrifices they have made for us, the love they shower on us and the care that they take of us in difficult times; indeed if not for them none of us would have been what we are.
Next in line would be our colleagues/bosses/employers, with whom we end up spending most of our time and while it is true that sometimes we are competing with them, it is always important to have an attitude of gratitude, let people around us know that they are doing a great job and let’s thank them for being there with us, for us. A major challenge people face here is the reluctance/hesitance to express gratitude. For at times they feel praising a colleague at work place would give him an edge over them and while deep inside they want to thank him for the job he has done or is doing, their reluctance to come out of their shell acts as barrier. Always remember gratitude is the sign of noble souls and feeling gratitude but not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it.
Last but certainly not the least our Customers, which can be both internal and external, in our case mostly internal. Let’s take a moment to express our gratitude towards our customers, it is because of them that we exist and we owe it to them for believing in our service and allowing us to serve them.
Respect – Coming from Reliance family this is one of our core values, while we all know how important it is to be respectful towards our elders in family, society colleagues & seniors in our company, seldom do we realise the value of being respectful towards persons who are younger to us or juniors or those who are at the front line of work. I always tell my team that while each one of us will always willingly or unwillingly show respect towards his/her boss, very few of us will actually treat the technician or the housekeeping staff working for us at the store with the same respect. Always remember a customer sometime meets a House Keeping person in store to decide how good the retail experience is & if that experience is great, that’s the difference we need to bring in the society. Every team member feels their contribution is important.
This value becomes all more important in the service industry where we are offering people our service, it is no rocket science that people prefer going to places where they are treated well and shown respect, similarly the more respectfully we treat our customers the more our business will flourish.
Lastly respect yourself. Although how simple it may sound but it this trait which will guide you and see you through during tough times. Always remember “respect for others guides our manners but it is respect for self that guides our morals”.
Ownership– One of my #Shaktimantra for leadership is “ Leadership is not about practicing best on Delegation of Authority but practicing best on Delegation of Ownership with team consistently “ . When we have team who works with ownership mind-set most of the worries are over on best of output from team. Ownership another one from our core values albeit a simple one – “lets own what we do.” Half of our problems won’t even arise if we imbibe this value. Let’s treat every job we do as our own & look for more possibilities on supporting better. Ownership is very infectious therefore more we demonstrate more we find team member adopting it. Don’t let the fear of failure be a blockade, I always tell my team if you want to grow as a leader, allow yourself to fail but fail fast & also learn fast as well because failures teach us what success doesn’t. Let people own their assignments, let them work freely without the failure of fear and you will be amazed to see how well they perform.
When a team takes ownership of the problems they are facing more often than not the problem gets solved, this is true for every sphere of life irrespective of the place we are in.
No one tells us in our family to take ownership in what we do every day but we still ensure every money spend gets proper value , every work assigned gets done with utmost quality & every responsibility assigned to us gets executed with best of spirit & enthusiasm. Same is adopted by our next generations without a major hand holding, why can’t we create similar legacy in our work environment as well?
Willingness– This completes the concept (GROW). Willingness is the quality or state of being prepared to do something, to do something more, to try once again if we weren’t successful first time. As a leader we should always be willing to go that extra mile and challenge our limits & we would want our team to possess the same attitude. The transition from – Why me? To – Try me is very important part on willingness, will take us places & makes us to achieve what we never dreamed even. Willingness is where it really boils down to real action & being different from the crowd, everyone one of us in want of staying ahead of our competition. Willingness is most motivating factor in every leader’s successful life, results are in proportion to the push we have given to our willingness. I say even when you feel you have tried all options anyone could think of & yet not succeeded, don’t surrender today, let’s surrender tomorrow. Believe me you won’t have to do that because by that time you had the solution already with you. It is said “First rule is not to lose & Second rule is to remember First rule always”
Be willing to work hard, add little more every day, be willing to challenge yourself, go out of your comfort zone, be willing to learn, be willing to appreciate, be willing to trust, be willing to forgive, be willing to let go & always remember.
“Where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great”. This is one of another #Shaktimantra to #StayFabulous in life…
Dr Shakti Chauhan : Country Head-Facilities Management & Mall Operations, PhD in Management
