Keys to leadership development

Santi graduated 18 months ago and has been with a multinational corporation (MNC) for a year. He's a young and energetic man with ambition.

``Usually, the role of managers is to get things done by others, it means you have to know how to train or coach, motivate and influence people and assign them tasks. You can practise these even if you don't have people to report to you.

``First, you have to be sure that your performance is outstanding. To be a potential candidate for promotion, you must perform really well.''

``I thought the hard part finished after I graduated. Then, what's the point of studying so hard?''

``Studying hard is to prepare you for the real word and also helps you enter a good organisation. If you want to stay in the comfort zone you can, but you wouldn't go very far in your career.''

``But how can I practise managing people without people working for me?''

``Leadership is about initiative. You can practise coaching, motivating and influencing others by being the mentor to a newcomer. Your company hires new staff every month. Why don't you tell the human resource department that you want to help by acting as a transitional buddy for a newcomer? You can educate the newcomer about how to adjust to the new job. You can provide them with informal orientation about the working culture here. You can then use these opportunities to practise you people skills.

``The other way is to promote yourself at meetings. A meeting room is the place where you can be noticed by many people including the management. Treat every meeting as showtime for you. Read the agenda, prepare related information, as well as your own viewpoints on the topics at hand and practise presenting them. You may need to role-play. Go to the meeting room 10 minutes early _ try to be the first one.

``At the meeting, management expects everyone to contribute. Contribution includes saying what you agree with, backed up with plausible reasons. You should not just nod your head and smile because most managers do not value these gestures. In fact, they might think that you're just another free-loader. You also have to identify some questions that you would like to ask.''

``It's a bit like showing off, isn't it?''

``If you're professional, I think that's okay. I know that you don't want to create a man-sai (jealousy) effect.''

``Then what?''

``Volunteer to be a project member. Usually, MNCs have a lot of cross-functional team (CFT) initiatives. Ask to be a part of them.''

``But my workload is already heavy.''

``If you want to be promoted, you have to demonstrate to your boss that you're ready for more responsibilities.

``Look at how you do your work. Do you work hard but not smart? Do you still do things manually where you can automate them? Do you do a lot of low-value activities and disregard high-priority tasks? Have you ever asked your boss or other high performers how to improve your productivity? Answer all these questions and you'll be surprised at how much you can actually do _ it's just a case of making some modifications to how to approach your work.''

``What's next?''

``You participate as much as you can. Don't just show up. If possible, take a leadership role. In most CFTs, there are several sub-tasks. You can volunteer to lead any of them. That way, you'll learn how to lead others. In many organisations, CFTs have been through a lot of training and development. It's a good place for you to upgrade your competencies.''

``This is good advice. I'd like to share it with my friends who work for other companies as well. However, some of them don't work for MNCs, so they might not have the same opportunities. What would you suggest?''

``If they don't have many new staff, try mentoring university students. Coach them in whatever you're good at. For some, try joining multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing companies as a part-time job. You can learn how to build self-confidence and also practise managing people.''

Kriengsak Niratpattanasai is the founder of TheCoach, specialising in executive coaching in leadership and cross-cultural skills. Copies of previous columns are available at www.thaicoach.com. He can be reached at 02-517-3126 or coachkriengsak@yahoo.com