Learnings on Leading People and Teams

In this course, I have learned some key elements that are fundamental when dealing with people in a company – and also at home. In the first session, I realized that sometimes people hear to other people say, but they do not listen. Although this may seem obvious, we don’t realize this much, and it is more common than it seems. In the first session I also learnt about the importance (and the dangers) of making assumptions. In the video presented, the boss asked about bringing a new colleague to work with the main character in a political campaign. The main character made assumptions that plain wrong. He was willing to leave his job because he thought that his boss didn’t want him, and felt even threatened by the arrival of a new colleague, when, in fact, his boss really wanted to know his opinion. In the RESAF case, my main learning was before giving someone negative feedback, it’s fundamental to weight in the pros and cons of the outcome of the feedback, and its respective probabilities of happening. For example, if you believe that the person receiving the feedback is highly unlikely to respond negatively to it, maybe it’s better to not even give the feedback. Also, I learned that, when you open your mouth, you lose control – i.e., when you start giving feedback, you can control what you say but not the way the person will perceive it. So, even if you are very polite and “delicate”, the way the other will understand the feedback is unpredictable. It’s important to take into account different cultures reactions. Also, people are not the same as you – for example, there are “niños de papá” everywhere. In summary, before giving feedback, the best way of acting is: 1) define the problem 2) generate alternatives; 3) analyze weights of pros and cons, and its probabilities of happening. Personally, I don’t agree much with not