Whenever I assign some work to my team members, I think about the pattern in which they fell while they are accepting the responsibility. Let us call them as “Responsibility acceptance patterns”. I think these patterns are applicable to all the engineers working in teams. I have categorized these patterns mainly into seven types. They are explained below.
1. Acceptor: Some people accept responsibility immediately. They do not think about the success or failure of the task they are going to take up. They just go ahead and accept the responsibility. They do not evaluate the consequences. They think that whatever work is coming their way, they take up that work.
2. Negotiator: Some people report all obstacles on the way and delay to accept responsibility. However they finally accept the responsibility. They show reluctance in accepting responsibility initially, after sometime of discussion they accept the responsibility. These people really thing about the success or failure of the outcome or result towards which they are going to work.
3. Executor: Some people promise the deliverables with exact date and time and deliver them without even informing us the obstacles they encountered on the way. They deliver what they promised on time. These people have the high confidence level in their day to day life.
4. Rejecter: Some straight away rejects the responsibility. These people know that the goal can not be achievable or because of fear of failure they reject to take up the responsibility.
5. Delayer: Some people postpone the acceptance of responsibility. They say that “Can we decide this later?”. They just postpone the decision time so that they can postpone their taking of responsibility.
6. Transferor: Some transfer the responsibility on to others. This is one way of avoiding the responsibility. They say that some body else in the team is free or more suitable to this kind of work and avoid taking responsibility for themselves.
7. Team Player: Some people want to make the task as team task. Instead of taking responsibility on to himself he makes it as a team task. This behavior is also observed in team environments. He shares ownership with the team or group of people.
We will observe all these patterns in our day to day life. We can see all these types of acceptance patterns when you are working in engineering or non-engineering teams in small or big organizations.
Not all the time one individual belongs to one pattern. Based on the situation, problem, environment and context, the individual exhibits his behavior and falls into one of the above patterns. One may exhibit one pattern of behavior once and another pattern of behavior next time. People come under Executor pattern exhibit high confidence level. They saw few failures in their career time. Even if they see failures, they will communicate them with lot of confidence and transparency. Rejecter pattern is sometimes agreeable but not all the time. In long term, Rejecter and Transferor will have negative impact than the other patterns.
Path to Acceptance
If an individual is not interested or partially interested in the given task, he shows the following behavior/steps in the process of acceptance. They are basically the steps for acceptance of the responsibility. A manager should observe the following steps shown by individual.
Reluctance->Reject->Think->Compromise->Accept
Mainly this behavior of individual can be observed in performance appraisal discussions. Also this behavior can be observed in salary negotiation talks.
IT Industry Perspective
In IT industry engineers work as teams and individual contributors sometimes. These people need support when they are working as individual contributors in high pressure environment. Motivation and support make the individual contributor to achieve his targets with efficiency. Definitely this is going to improve the quality of work and deliverables as well.
A Project or Program or Portfolio manager should exhibit negotiation skills, leadership skills, problem solving skills and conceptual skills in his day to day work. A project manager has to deal with all the people come under all these patterns and has to become a good decision maker and good negotiator. The primary skill for the success of any project manager is his communication skills. Without which the project may be a disaster because the project manager spends almost 90% of his time in communication. It may be direct communication or sending and receiving mails or may be meetings with stakeholders.
The project manager has to show his negotiation skills while delegating work to the engineers and communicating the project plan to the stakeholders. While delegating work, he may face resistance from team members for accepting the tasks. The above mentioned path to acceptance will be helpful to a manager while discussing tasks with the team members.
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About the Author:
The author has over 11 years experience in IT industry. He works as Product Manager at Canarys Automations Ltd, Bangalore. He has Bachelor of Science, Master of Computer Applications, Master of Technology and Executive MBA from India. He is Project Management Institute, USA certified Project Management Professional (PMP).He worked in USA, UK, Ireland, Finland and India as IT and Management Consultant. He worked as employee or Consultant to companies such as IBM, SIEMENS, Interwoven, Wipro Technologies, Citicorp, Nokia, Salomon Smith Barney, SIAC, DSET Corporation, IONA Technologies, Birla-Horizons International, and PCL Mindware.He has few publications in Management. His articles were published in The Hindu, Indian Management, Express Computers, Businessgyan, Business & Management, The Global Educator, Computers Today and CSI Communications.He has interests in both technology and management.
G.P.Sudhakar, MCA, M.Tech, EMBA, PMP
Product Manager
Canarys Automation Ltd
Bangalore
India
Cell: +91-9900728687
