Managing a Subordinate

After being put in charge of a project (among my other projects), I was given one assistant executive to work together on this most recent project.

Over these weeks, I discovered that managing and working with a subordinate is really not an easy responsibility. Everyone seems to have a mind of their own, and sometimes it isn’t simple to persuade or convince them to work along with your instruction.

During this week, I had encountered disagreements over big and small decisions, sometime as small as repeatedly telling him to pay more attention to spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, un-standardized paragraphing, amount of page border to reserve, how and where to arrange companies’ logos, type of font to be used for documents, what level of detail is required for reporting, when to make follow up calls to member companies, how to organize meeting dates, etc. The list is unending!

I recalled that I was once reprimanded by my Dept Head for being too lenient and soft on my project deadlines and level of expectations. I am now learning to be even more strict and disciplined. Work is in the end still work… and we are paid to do a job and get it done.

One more very obvious fact that I learnt is that what is of priority to me, may not be such a level of priority to others. This is one hard fact that everyone has to recognize when it comes to working with people. Priorities differ, even though it may not seem so from the surface. But oh well, its part of learning how to manage and interact with people. It’s still a good learning experience so far. =)