Surprised at the title? No body has seen speed breakers on a rail track. Thank God there are none! But I am writing about corporate Engines and speed breakers today. Metro design offices included.
As we all know a train has an engine and boggies which it pulls. There is a track and there are signals. To climb harder slopes sometimes more than one engine is deployed. Now a team leader has a role to play that is of an engine. It pulls the boggies or staff who carry the work load. Track represents the guidelines and systems to keep things moving streamlined. Signals represent self checks for control and avoiding errors.
The team leader is required to be strong, motivating, able to keep the team moving towards target and to lead from from front. An engine has a limited capacity and cannot pull more than stipulated load. Similarly in corporate offices it is seen when workload increases boggies or staff are increased to share the workload but engines are not increased. In many cases the teamleaders start putting obstacles or speed breakers for deployment of new engines or teamleaders despite increased workload only to retain his/her power. The fears that another engine will take over him result in speedbreaker like situation where the workload is not handled in smooth manner and the teamleader suffers lack of energy to cope with pulling of load alone.
This is situation in most of corporate design offices. And once this happens the profits starts going downhill. A good and effective leader will always respect the talent without fearing it, allow it to take role as another teamleader and workload becomes easier to handle. Ineffective teamleaders are afraid, they keep on adding more junior staff instead of new teamleads. This only results in increasing their own workload.
At workplace motivation, appreciation and rewards are necessary. If a teamleader wants his own growth, he or she needs to allow growth of the team members. Putting speed breaker in way of team ultimately makes the workplace stressfull and in the end non productive. Companies when realise this after setbacks and complaints from clients have already lost credibility in market and soon their engines are parked. Talent and merit needs encouragement and empowering so that collective energy is harvested in interest of company.