First Impressions!!!

Often we are the victim of our first impressions... we tend to judge a person based on the first opinion that we form of a person even before we talk to him....

Today we had a guest presentation in one of the courses... the speaker was not someone who would make a great first impression.. He had a tummy which would not allow him to see his feet ...
Neither did he have the pseud accent that we tend to associate with effective speakers....

When he started off, it felt like he was globing away without any specific context..but when he narrowed down the discussion to something specific....he really showed great clarity in communication....which you often lack in presentations.. its difficult to get a hang of the central theme....

The discussion was focussed on leadership in the software industry... His analogies were really good...

The first tendency of a manager faced with a disgruntled employee is to make an all out effort to retain him but he was of the opinion that we should engage the person first....try to ascertain the facts.... Try to see if there are any disguised reasons.......Ask him to think of questions about new organization that he might be joining.. give him pointers in terms of direction he needs to think instead of being dismissive of his new organization.....

Engaging a person is akin to maintaining a bank account..you make debits as well as credits...but ultimately its the engagement in the past the leaders can count on to retain the person....

Moving in a different direction, leaders have been glorified while the word manager has been used in a pejorative way....What we need in the software industry is Management++...a manager who is on the look out for opportunities and who is willing to take calculated risks......

While i presented his views in a bland way...his anecdotes were very interesting......Its simply too difficult to catch them in words......