The Hindu Business Line : <I>Sense of vision is a key skill </I>

Our rapidly changing business environment creates confusion for many managers. They find themselves doing the job rather than providing strategic intervention. Today our leadership too frequently gets caught up in day-to-day fire fighting.

Getting the best out of workers and helping them to achieve their full potential is above all a product of the softer side of management-how individuals are treated, inspired and challenged.

Energise: The best managers are masters of making things happen, They create far more energy than they consume and instead of taking energy from an organisation, they amplify and channel it back to the organisation.

Empower: Great managers allow their employees to do great work. They delegate responsibility and the authority necessary to get a job done.

Support: It used to be that the job of a manager was to give orders and to make sure that their employees did as they were told. This is no longer the case. Increasingly, managers are becoming coaches, colleagues, and cheerleaders for the employees.

Today's managers are ever more frequently called upon to lead a team or group of individuals with manifestly diverse backgrounds, motivations, cultural and ethnic roots, and capabilities. The goals and targets towards which leaders guide their groups are themselves changing with the environment. They therefore no longer have the assurance of being able to state clearly defined destinations for the rest of the group, if fast changing circumstances compel a regular re-articulation and adjustment of the desired goals. The first and most obvious area in which leaders need to re-orient their thinking and behaviour is the area of what is traditionally called human resource management. Leadership works towards the transformation of people, empowering them to work together towards the consequent desired changes and transformation of situations.

Perhaps, the single most telling source of authority of a true manager is a sense of vision and a commitment of that vision. Needless to say that the vision has to be one that is well chosen and articulated. Management skills must be part of the tool kit of every manager. But managers of the future can and must be more than managers. They must be able to optimise the potentials inherent to the realities of diversity rather than just tolerate or deal with it.

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