I am particularly amazed about their concept of the ideal graduate, a graduate that embodies various characteristics that include being a global player, a collaborative team member, physically fit, an effective communicator, an innovative problem solver, a life-long learner, a responsible citizen, god-loving and caring, a critical thinker, a judicious decision maker, a principled participant and lastly, competent and confident.
I began to think what I thought an ideal manager should be and from there I realized that the characteristics I would ask for would more or less be the same. We want our people to be well-rounded physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We all want them to be genuinely good inside and out, a shining example to the community. More importantly, we want a person who knows what he’s doing and knows what to do during uncertainty.
I also thought about how lucky these children would be. They have seven years to work on these traits yet a lot of us in management send out our people to two-day seminars and expect the same. I do understand that there is a big difference between the typical employee and your twelve-year-old but the point is that it takes a lot more than a weekend workshop to shape people’s behaviors. Nothing beats living the values you aim for, a thing that these children would do (at least for the seven years they will be in grade school). Your organization should be the source of learning for these values, not the two-day workshops, not the weekend seminars. When people see, hear, and breathe these values at work, you can expect them to live it.
Another thing that came into mind is that management skills are life skills and that each of us should be a manager at any age and stage. From here I suggest that we teach our subordinate like he or she is your child. I certainly don’t want to confuse this with teaching styles and the obvious differences in learning between an adult and a child. The only thing I am driving at is that when we teach or train, we should do it in the belief that it will be something of use not only for the task at hand but throughout the person’s life. That everything they learn will be carried onto the other aspects of their individual being. We have to be careful however not to spoon-feed their learning. Employees should always be encouraged to think their way towards situations not only to find out what, but at the same time knowing why and how, ensuring that learning is transformed to application from the training room to the workplace.
Lastly, the concept of the ideal graduate described at the beginning points to the fact that individual transformation does not happen at a flip of a switch. This is a small but important detail a lot of us managers miss. Managers do not necessarily graduate so ideal managers are constant works-in-progress, becoming managers not only for the moment, but managers for life.
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