Aaron Thomas: Senior Managers Need To Play Their Project Roles More Effectively

1. Aaron Thomas: Senior Managers Need To Play Their Project Roles More Effectively Having self-regard is critical not only to how you see yourself but also how others look at you and that to a great extent decides the level of success you're going to achieve. Self-regard is your conscious choice in defining who you are and what you want. That you cannot settle for anything less or compromise on the principal choices you have made in defining yourself. Imagine a scenario at the office, you want a job done as per your guidelines but your subordinate takes it easy and either doesn't deliver at all or hands over sub standard work. He took it easy because he took you for granted. He could do that because you didn't have a good degree of self-regard. Aaron Thomas is responsible for scheduling both personal and professional tasks that the executive needs to complete. This involves organizing tasks by level of urgency, taking calls and communicating via email. Now imagine you've understood the value of self-regard and have no qualms in asserting yourself as and when required. You consider you are important, simply by virtue of being a self-respecting individual and not necessarily infringing another's dignity. Having this outlook, you are polite but firm at the time of assigning the job, and without being blunt you make it obvious that you expect nothing less. This leads to another attribute which is a must have for a senior manager, Self- actualization. Self-actualization comes from the solid foundation of positive self-regard and means one going all out to be at his creative best, has a sense of purpose about what he or she wants to achieve and is energized to get to his optimum. Reality testing is another technique managers can apply to their advantage in their day to day working and assessment of several case scenarios which keep coming up in the corporate or business world. For instance, the possible transfer of a man in operations to another team may be required but he makes his unhappiness about this decision obvious. As a manager you need to work out all possible outcomes, whichever way the decision goes. Reality testing helps you take a step wise approach in looking at all possible consequences.

2. Happiness is a great virtue to have for a senior manager as he is a leader who needs to keep the spirits of his team high, at all times and taking all the usual pitfalls, roadblocks and upheavals, which are part and parcel of the daily routine of a business. A sad and forlorn leader cannot gear up his regiment to "go for the kill" every day. And no manager can think of running things smoothly without having good interpersonal relationships which can be developed most by application of the above values thoroughly.