The Team building & Halo effect
Name: Raj Kumar Jha
Designation: Head of controlling Accounting risk & CS – thyssenkrupp Regional headquarter – India & A Board Member of one of the group company of thyssenkrupp.
Company: Thyssenkrupp India Pvt. Ltd.
Growing up in an Indian joint family👪 had its own numerous merits, not only it inculcated me, how to develop meaningful teamwork but also passed the innate knowledge of empathy, cooperation, and celebrating the victory of others. In normal these spirits are my lodestar of across journey of my career and my life. Today I am mid of life & looking back at all milestones which have come in my path & crossed somehow successfully, where I find all these instincts had many roles and gave me some purpose in my life.
My corporate journey was more un-orthodox, very early-stage in my career I had to lead a very mature team of finance, where the majority of my team members were either over 40’s or ’50s, being part of so a strong team was a high point in my career but that point of time I was still not able to understand, why the people obeying & following you despite they have a higher degree of experiences and strongholds in that particular organization. It was still unanswered for many years, later during the pep talk with my old colleague it emanated that it was a mutual trust, a guiding point, and having a clear vision for the discussed planning & topics. That time I was very much clear these spirits are indicated and carrying under my skin.
The journey is still on, but an experience that I would like to share here is my experience in “team building “. I worked majorly in startups where my responsibilities always included building a strong Finance & legal team. I had a very strong & professional team, very close nit, cooperative & mooted to complete the task much before the deadlines🎯. All my overseas senior executives had some special praise for my team. In the process of expansion of the team sometime you are forced to have some adverse selection either lack of some information or otherwise. The new team member was not so engrossed and carrying the team spirit rather he had his own whims & not embraced by other team members. Now in every meeting, we started finding some sort of awry in our planning and actually, some lagging in the schedules. Some untold complaints were apparent.
Honestly, I was too grappling with the “Halo effect“ for the new member considering him as a weak link. After 3 months I wanted to be decisive, so I called a meeting with Sr. Managers & ask their opinion on the way forward. On the contrary, the opinions were so positive & very pragmatic, it was unanimous that let us make him the strong point of the team. The process was like this the senior managers will guide him through all day-to-day work & I need to spend an hour or two weekly bases to discuss with him to know his progress, talking about Indian & world economics, etc. it was the coup de grace to end the discussion of a weak link. The result was amazing my new team member was promoted two times during my tenure in the organization.
My takeaway from this process is that henceforth not to be rash, I used to analyze my team member’s strengths & weaknesses and discuss with them honestly. Now equal focus on the weakness and transform them into strengths as long as it’s not inherent in nature. Later I joined the IIM-C house to study further. I came across “the Pygmalion effect” & this psychological phenomenon I understood very well as I encompassed through in my practical world.
In essence, now I am an entrenched believer of the perfect team budling can be done only when we possess the psychological understanding of the team members & inspire them to work for the team. I believe we all have the same normal IQ, EQ & AQ sometime a team member needs more time to understand than others.
Further focus on understanding weaknesses & plan for eradicating them is also a point, we need to allocate time & work constructively to make our team further stronger. Theoretically, It looks like a cakewalk but needs a higher degree of passion to make the change. The organizational policy can be a lode star but as a leader getting efficacious, sometimes we need to go the extra mile.
