Listen to lead

Managing things is truly a tough job . It is not only identifying resources and allocating them as and when needed (now, when I say resources, it also includes the human resources), but also about sorting out differences (amongst people) and convincing them to do the job. It becomes particularly difficult when you have too many managers (self-proclaimed) in your team. They just spoil the dish. This problem becomes evident in a situation where you dont have a single, pre-decided manager. The best way I see in such situations is to pro-actively support those guys who want to take the initiative and then, fall behind them till they finish the job. This sounds some thing like managing the managers. Though people might not realize this, its still an efficient way to get the things done.
I remember, during one of our corporate outings, we had a group activity, which needed us to divide ourselves in to 4 teams and then, compete amongst us. My team had around 12 members and most of them were willing to direct some one else rather than willing to listen to some one. They had ideas and were hunting for people who would implement them. At one point, we had almost 9 people talking simultaneously and incessantly and hardly anyone listening to them (yeah...you guessed it right.. the other 3 were not interested in listening at all). At this point, I had a choice to make, either continue dabbling (like others) and then, loose the competition or be a manager's manager.
I stopped explaining my ideas. Instead, I picked up a guy who was speaking some thing sensible and listened to his ideas keenly. Once done, I started asking him questions and by this time, other people also started noticing the things happening around them. Slowly, about 50% of us were doing just one thing. That was listening. As and when some credible objections came up, there were alternate views and suggestions. Finally, after about 15 mins, I could see everyone looking at me for a chance to explain their ideas. They have, in other words, accepted my leadership. However, one thing I should agree here is that, content wise, I was not adding any value but I was doing some thing more important than that. I was coordinating. I know, at the end of the day, no one might accept me as a leader but they cannot certainly deny the fact that they accepted me as an interlocutor (at least).
This satisfied me. All that I wanted was to have a cohesive effort rather than a spate of incongruent tries by the team members.

One more important thing that I have learnt from that day was to listen. The art of listening is really important. You can never co-ordinate things amongst a group unless you listen to your members keenly. Some people have an opinion that listening to some one hampers their prospects of speaking. I would like to contradict this because if you carefully observe, 60-70% (typically) of the team members prefer speaking rather than listening. Hence, there is a dearth of listeners and not speakers. Once you start listening to them and start involving them together, you would not only get the chance of speaking but also get the privilege of coordinating and leading.
Hence, the thought for the day is ‘Listen to lead’…doesn’t that sound gud ;)))
Luv