Counselling

While studying the wisdom of HBR On Strategy, I was asked to do some counselling for MC - a colleague of mine who is recently promoted to a newly created position, and is uncertain about what projects to do to satisfying the new job.

We discussed the matter for nearly an hour. (Quite against my personality, eh?) In fact, much of the time was spent on grumbling - mostly related to inter-personal difficulties encountered by my friend in this new position. For several times, I asked "What actually do you want to do?" and I heard the same problem, with the identical conclusion that hardly anything could be done.

I said to myself, "This is not a good sign."

After considering my position for a brief moment, I decided to continue to play Socrates and kept asking my original question. At the end of the day, I got some concrete answer, so that the two of us could formulate a few short-term targets and decide on things that could be immediately done. From what I learnt from Steven Silbiger and those HBR papers, I also fixed up a time with MC to review the progress and consider the next step to move.

(To be continued.)