The Empathetic Approach

In the West, attempts to tackle these problems of personal effectiveness, as distinct from functional effectiveness of managers, have often been labelled the "soft" side of management. But in a workplace teeming with overstressed, overworked and anxiety-ridden executives, more and more companies are realising the need to take upon themselves the task of straightening people’s emotions and interactions if they want to reap productivity gains and profits.

In short, if you want your annual performance graph to show an upward spiral, issues like time management, leadership building, stress dissipation, transition management and team effectiveness will have to dominate company agenda instead of being relegated, as they have so far been in India, to the realm of self-development.

Take time management, for instance. A common complaint of most executives is that they lack time to even scratch their heads. Yet, points out M.D.G. Koreth, senior vice-president at Ranbaxy Laboratories: "Research shows that in most orga-nisations people spend 40 to 50 per cent of their time in inconclusive discussion, while the rest of the day might be spent in office politics." "If you analyse your effective time residue," Koreth notes, "it might barely make a double digit percentage."

Realising that time management isn’t just an individual ball game and that it impacts heavily on the collective efficiency of an organisation, companies are increasingly taking the help of specialists to resolve the problem. Thriving on this new need are institutes like the Time Management Institute (TMI). Devoted solely to helping people manage their time effectively, TMI has conducted over 50 programmes by way of seminars and in-company workshops in less than two years since its inception.

Bosses at Wipro and IFB are even having a crack at being better leaders through task-oriented and relationship-oriented modules. Leaders are not born, they can be taught leadership, says J.P. Singh, joint managing director of Apex Training Services, a consultancy with clients like Nestle, Hindustan Lever and American Express. "Most marketing managers tend to involve themselves in the market situation when target deadlines approach. We recommend observer status for the bosses. Work should be delegated to the juniors. And this point is driven home by putting bosses in the shoes of the juniors in simulated situations or through games." Delegation builds confidence in the juniors besides making the boss a hero in the eyes of subordinates. A respected boss is an effective boss.

And stress. Do specialists have an answer for the superfluous neurons raging through your spinal column? Yes. Walk into the Newchem group offices and chances are you will see a batch of necktied executives grunting like chimpanzees. They are not acting weird. They are just following stress relieving instructions from Kiron Wadhera, executive director at Accord, a training con-sultancy organisation.

"Competition is a double-edged sword," says Wadhera. While it creates superior products in the marketplace and better service, the people creating them often become victims of their own creation. "They become highstrung and are constantly scared about failing or losing out," he observes.

At another Accord workshop you may find tear-stained faces—executives getting rid of anxieties and fears through catharsis. There’s also positive stroking, jargon for good old high-fives and back-slapping.

Which brings us straight to team building through psychoanalysis. At Samtel, for instance, managers undertake courses on painting appreciation, discuss and debate classical dance or characters in Maha-bharata. These have a deeper significance. For instance, a manager choosing Ekalavya as his favourite character might be har-bouring feelings of loss or sacrifice in attaining his present position in life. Such exercises become important tools in deciding which type of personalities can work together most optimally in a team.

Says Dr Somnath Chattopadhyay, human resource consultant at Samtel: "We try to create an atmosphere which has to do with Indian traditions, as the western workplace culture is inherently anti-people." Concepts like re-engineering or flat, lean and thin workforces, he says, are based on the inherent connotation that too many people are bothersome and should be dispensed with. "Other concepts like variable pay or performance pay are reducing people to products with price tags. People are therefore uncomfortable and insecure in the new environment. We attempt through psychoanalysis to sort out seeming contradictions."

And there’s a mantra to deal with ego clashes, too. They are sought to be controlled through games that depersonalise conflict. For example, while a finance manager’s job entails collecting outstanding dues from customers within the stipulated time, a sales manager’s job brief dictates customer satisfaction over loan repayment considerations. Thus, a potentially volatile situation can be created with the basic job function as the genesis. At companies like Merind and Apollo Tyres, Singh has solved such problems by simulating role-reversals.

And the best way to manage change? Talk about it. Says Wadhera: "Most people when told to change just nod in agreement. But they go back to doing things exactly the way they have been used to. The trick is to get them to talk about what exactly they dislike about a new project or concept." People, clearly, become amenable to new concepts if you thrash it out with them.

Says Koreth: "The so called soft side of management is clearly being sought to be operationalised and translated into quantifiable processes and figures so that behavioural and attitudinal problems might be diagnosed and remedial measures taken." Companies like Modi Xerox have even started the process of quantifying by conducting employee surveys. Every single employee’s view is solicited on his boss, peers and subordinates via a structured questionnaire. The feedback is replayed to the bosses and sometimes even processed into reports shared with all the employees.

In fact, companies like Ranbaxy are moving towards an organisational model where the human resource function serves as a support service instead of a command centre. This model calls upon a line manager to take on the responsibility of retaining, developing and motivating his people to perform in the belief that cross-functional partnership makes organisations more cohesive, and intra-personal relations harmonious.

With companies beginning to look at personal transformation of executives as an essential investment, sending employees for training in personal effectiveness is no longer looked upon as a reward. Predicts Singh: "Within two to three years, companies would spend at least one per cent of their turnover on training pro-grammes with more stress on issues of leadership development, inter-personal relationships and conflict-management." In fact, last year alone Nestle allocated about Rs 5 crore on HRD consultancy and training. Adds Singh: "Such mega-budgets are not just being spent on warm and fuzzy ideas but concrete modules which give fairly accurate results."

 While there may be no readymade formula to increase personal effectiveness of managers, a problem recognised is half solved. In a market where success is measured in terms of achievement in a compressed time frame, the psychological fallout both for the losers as well as the winners is tremendous. And as long as the icons of achievement remain individualistic, it is a battle half won if the corporate world learns to deflect the flak coming its way.