May I take your five minutes please

It goes back to the time when I was an engineer trainee on my first job. Like most of the work places, we were not getting as much support and guidance as we needed or hoped for. Managers didn't have time to coach us. Some of them asked us to meet them at 5:30 in the evening, exactly after the working hours ended. When we went to meet some others in the first half, they used to call us in the second half. They all seemed to have kept their noses to the grindstone. We had hard time keeping our thumb up.

But when ever I went to meet our Plant Head, he had enough time for us. Often he called us in, even when we didn't have prior appointment. He looked interested in our training and used to ask us to brief him about what we learnt in the previous week. At one time when I was about to leave, he flattered me by saying: Anything else, technical, that I can explain to you? I couldn't believe my ears! Not a single manager, engineer or worker had said that to me. How was that possible? I asked some questions, which he explained with interest. Young people have lots of questions. If solutions to all their queries can't be provided, at least they should be facilitated to search on their own. When I asked him why an innovative practice was not being followed in the plant, he said: think and tell me, what may be the reasons it is not being followed here. What are the plus and minus points associated with it? I thought and found answer to my query on my own!

How that was possible that the top most person had enough time for others, but the lower rank personnel were busy up to the brink most of the time. It became clear to me when I read it in a book: More successful you are, more time you have for your people. If you are successful, you learn to manage time. You know how to take efficient decisions within a timeframe. You know what to delegate and to whom. You know what right thing should be done at what right time and in which right way. You know how to reply in a single sentence, in a situation when others will need a hundred words. In short, your success gets reflected in the plenty of time you have for your subordinates.