"On Managing Yourself"
Bahrulla Abdulla, Ph.D., P.E.
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In the last couple days, I had a chance to do some catching up in my reading. One of the books I have read and personally found particularly helpful is “HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself” published about a decade ago by Harvard Business Review (HBR). Most of the books or articles on leadership tend to focus on skills or mindsets necessary for successfully leading or managing other people.?There is no question that leadership skills in this sense will become increasingly important as the responsibility in work increases. In almost all cases, no one works in an absolute isolation and we must collaborate with other people to deliver values or advance a meaningful agenda, both of which works better when there is an effective leadership mechanism in place. ?However, what’s even more important is the ability to manage or lead oneself. This is because we not only understand ourselves much better but also tend to “interact” with ourselves much more frequently and intimately than we possibly do with anyone else. When done correctly or enough, managing oneself could have all types of beneficial ripple effects in an organization. In fact, self-management should be a pre-requisite for managing other people and we should all try to be our own manager or CEO, first. ?The book has 11 (including one bonus) articles that revolve around effectively managing oneself. I found one of them particularly practical and helpful.
One is “Managing Oneself” by Peter Drucker. Author started this article by stating that great achievers in history, like Mozart, da Vinci or Napoleon, were all very good at managing themselves in the sense that: (a) they know how to take full advantage of all the means at their disposal to develop themselves; (ii) they tend to place themselves where they could make the greatest contribution; (iii) they usually stay mentally alert or intellectually stimulated during their working lives. The author proposes a list of fundamental questions (or points) that we should (pose to ourselves and) find answers to in order to achieve the objective of effective self-management.
This question is quite self-explanatory, and it basically tries to find out your own strengths and in the meantime be aware of your limitations. Thus, you can try to put your efforts or energy where your strength is. This question basically is saying that you should put your available tools in appropriate use. For example, the main usage of a knife is to cut objects while the main usage for a traditional handsaw saw is to saw wood. Tools work best when they were used for what they are good at doing. Similarly, for all various reasons, we all tend to (or are meant to) be good at different things and we should try to find that out. One way to find that out is to take full advantage of available (internal or external) feedback mechanisms. One thing to note is what you are good (or bad) at may not necessarily fixed or it could change over time (for example, by practice/training or lack thereof).
We all have our own unique dispositions or configurations and thus we all tend to work in different ways. In order to manage ourselves better, we should find out how do we perform best. For finding that out, author provided two sub-questions we can ask ourselves (1) am I a reader or listener? (2) how do I learn? Finding these out and acting according to our dispositions and consolidating our abilities based on those configurations will enable us to perform better. Trying to be something or someone you are not will tend to only backfire and unlikely work for your advantage.
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Everyone’s calling in life or career tend to be slightly different. Someone might make it his/her mission to alleviate poverty around the world, while someone else might find more meaning in fighting the environmental pollution or protecting wildlife. ?After finding out what you are good at and how do you function better, you should also identify (or find out) our core values, which provides us with a clear purpose or direction. In order to work efficiently, there should be no (or few) misalignment between what you are good (and how you perform best) and what you find true meaning in doing. The existence of any conflict among those three aspects (strength, disposition and values) requires an honest revisit of at least one of the items.
Three questions above deal with aspects that are mostly internal to us. But we do not work in absolute isolation. In order to contribute to a meaningful cause that aligns with our values, we need a platform or an environment. This (external) environment (or factors) should also be conducive to one’s strength, values and ways of functioning. Only in such a supportive environment, one can expect to thrive.
Once finding out where do we belong, as we all tend to work with other people (who are unique individuals just the way we are), we should hold ourselves responsible for the type of relationship we established with other people. ?This means respecting their strengths (or weakness), dispositions and values. ?As everyone’s work is interdependent, being responsible for relationships also means doing your best to do (and do well) your part of the work so others can do theirs well. In other words, owning your work fully, which inevitably requires communicating appropriately (in terms of quality or quantity) with the team members involved.
At this section, author alludes to the points he made in the beginning of the article, most great achievers in history stay mentally alert or intellectually stimulated. In order to have a fulfilling career (or life), they try to stay fully aware of what they are doing and change gears or focus when necessary. The relatively recent shift from manual workers where one was told what to do to knowledge workers where one has to manager himself or herself emphasizes the increasing need for self-management.?In other words, we should be mindful of the second half of our lives when we make career decisions and welcome both the freedom and uncertainty associated with managing ourselves.