This resonates deeply, Gaurav. Leadership isn’t just about doing the work well, it’s about letting others grow, being clear about expectations, giving timely feedback, and understanding that each team member has unique motivations. The hardest lessons often teach us that influence comes from awareness and presence, not just skill or authority.
I really enjoyed this post. It reminded me of a number of things in my own experience.
The first being a series of corporate training videos that Peter Director did in conjunction with his textbook that my professor had us watch throughout “the Principles of Organization and Management Course”.
The videos are usually about 15-20 minutes long always a single topic about management.
Drucker was a brilliant communicator. And I think your post accentuates that in many ways because in order to be a good communicator, you have to really know what you’re talking about first of all. Secondly, you have to have clarity about that knowledge in order to communicate it well.
So it kind of interacts completely with what you wrote and it reminds me of so many mistakes I’ve made in the past as a manager.
It was never on a corporate level. It was mostly on a small business level, brick and mortar, in entities I owned.
However, my very first management job I kind of got by accident. I ended up managing warehouse and logistics for the initial Perrier marketing launch in San Francisco with no prior management experience.
At the time I was enrolled in my last year of management school at a private university in San Francisco.
I went into it figuring this is easy we can handle this, it’s just boxes and trucks.
The mechanical side was easy, but I found out very soon, people are not mechanical.
I guess I was tyrannical to some degree. But my management style kind of reflected my attitude about life, which is something else you talk about slightly differently, but similar concept.
I always figured if I needed something done right I’d do it myself - until I had a task bigger than I could handle by myself.
I remember very distinctly talking to one of the guys in the warehouse that I had hired. I had a conversation with him and it went like this.
“I’ve told you and shown you how to do this at least six times I’m not gonna tell you again.”
At the time that made total sense to me. I mean, when you load a truck for deliveries, you put the last deliveries on first in reverse order.
So that your first deliveries are at the tail end of the truck.
To me that was total common sense but not everybody. The big dilemma that got created by not following that order was that the driver would get to a location and the product that needed to be delivered was not at the back of the truck.
I realize I’m getting sidetracked so I’m gonna get back to my point.
It took me about six months to figure out how to talk to different people about the same items.
When you talk to six different people, there are often six different ways of hearing what you said. I didn’t realize in the beginning.
It took years of marinating my ego and learning that people hear things differently than you say them.
I’ll stop now.
Really like how you communicate.
I’m in the planning stages of a project and I’m trying to figure out how to design a system to grow effective leaders through education and hands-on experience.
I think management responsibilities and aptitudes in the future are gonna be a lot different than they are today.
Maybe I’m wrong about that but I think our culture is getting very complicated.
I enjoyed your article. I’ll keep reading your stuff.
This resonates deeply, Gaurav. Leadership isn’t just about doing the work well, it’s about letting others grow, being clear about expectations, giving timely feedback, and understanding that each team member has unique motivations. The hardest lessons often teach us that influence comes from awareness and presence, not just skill or authority.
I really enjoyed this post. It reminded me of a number of things in my own experience.
The first being a series of corporate training videos that Peter Director did in conjunction with his textbook that my professor had us watch throughout “the Principles of Organization and Management Course”.
The videos are usually about 15-20 minutes long always a single topic about management.
Drucker was a brilliant communicator. And I think your post accentuates that in many ways because in order to be a good communicator, you have to really know what you’re talking about first of all. Secondly, you have to have clarity about that knowledge in order to communicate it well.
So it kind of interacts completely with what you wrote and it reminds me of so many mistakes I’ve made in the past as a manager.
It was never on a corporate level. It was mostly on a small business level, brick and mortar, in entities I owned.
However, my very first management job I kind of got by accident. I ended up managing warehouse and logistics for the initial Perrier marketing launch in San Francisco with no prior management experience.
At the time I was enrolled in my last year of management school at a private university in San Francisco.
I went into it figuring this is easy we can handle this, it’s just boxes and trucks.
The mechanical side was easy, but I found out very soon, people are not mechanical.
I guess I was tyrannical to some degree. But my management style kind of reflected my attitude about life, which is something else you talk about slightly differently, but similar concept.
I always figured if I needed something done right I’d do it myself - until I had a task bigger than I could handle by myself.
I remember very distinctly talking to one of the guys in the warehouse that I had hired. I had a conversation with him and it went like this.
“I’ve told you and shown you how to do this at least six times I’m not gonna tell you again.”
At the time that made total sense to me. I mean, when you load a truck for deliveries, you put the last deliveries on first in reverse order.
So that your first deliveries are at the tail end of the truck.
To me that was total common sense but not everybody. The big dilemma that got created by not following that order was that the driver would get to a location and the product that needed to be delivered was not at the back of the truck.
I realize I’m getting sidetracked so I’m gonna get back to my point.
It took me about six months to figure out how to talk to different people about the same items.
When you talk to six different people, there are often six different ways of hearing what you said. I didn’t realize in the beginning.
It took years of marinating my ego and learning that people hear things differently than you say them.
I’ll stop now.
Really like how you communicate.
I’m in the planning stages of a project and I’m trying to figure out how to design a system to grow effective leaders through education and hands-on experience.
I think management responsibilities and aptitudes in the future are gonna be a lot different than they are today.
Maybe I’m wrong about that but I think our culture is getting very complicated.
I enjoyed your article. I’ll keep reading your stuff.