Management with open ears and eyes

A good management process starts from ears and eyes.          

Ears help the manager to listen to others. After all, hearing others is easy, if you have the physical capacity, but listening to people is something else as it requires attention and focus. Dynamic listening, a particular technique, requires the manager to turn into a coach so that he or she may help others to express their own feelings and emotions, dreams and tragedies.

Eyes help the individual to see people in a different perspective. Yes, being a manager is a job and as such, that person is expected to judge, evaluate and assess their employees all the time, but by opening eyes of understanding, a manager is able to catch signs of a talent, the possibilities of a change and the brilliance everyone has. A closed-eyes manager will just check the job; by going deep and opening eyes, the manager checks potentials too.

Both will help a boss to direct people’s energy in a direction that will be satisfied to the same person, the boss and others too. It also helps to fill the gap between management and leadership. So, open your eyes, open your ears, and let your world changes…

How to create an opportunity?

Normal belief is that opportunities just happen. During the 60’s, people start to get their lives into their own hands and a whole generation started to believe they could create an opportunity, but decades and many crises later, the old normal belief is probably ruling the world and people are feeling in general they don’t have other ways to overcome their situations.

It is true that marches are not working as they used to work before and most attempts to create something – a company, a new life, a new marriage – end in failure. Leaders are scarce and life is being lived on a day-to-day basis. But there is hope.

Yes, there is.

You probably have heard about SWOT Analysis. A little outdated, it is still crucial to get results in a fast way by identifying the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

From that perspective, you usually consider an opportunity as a situation or circumstance that may happen in your favor. But, by working on SWOT on a personal level, I have found out that an opportunity is (a situation to which you need) a strength that is still potential. In other words, you can create an opportunity by investing more time on some of your potentials.

It makes sense: instead of just focusing in your strengths, struggling with your weaknesses or fighting with possible threats, focus on that potential you know you have: maybe it is a skill you seldom use, or perhaps it is a quality others appreciate in you, but you normally don’t use it in a productive way.

Reflect.

Understand that potential, hidden behind many layers of other beliefs.

Invest time and energy to make the potential a reality and use it in life, turning an opportunity as part of your strengths, in a way.