In the initial months of working, the goal-oriented mindset of Anugrah often came in his way to build relationships with people from different teams within Adobe. He reached out to others for help/guidance when he got stuck – via an email or by directly going to their desk. However, once his query was resolved, he quickly moved on to completing the task, without taking a pause and acknowledging the person for his support via a Thank You email or by expressing gratitude verbally. Thus, his cross-team interactions seemed transactional. Sensing that this might impact long term relationships across our teams, I encouraged Anugrah to taka pause after receiving help from a colleague or an external vendor, acknowledge the support, and communicate his appreciation verbally or via written medium.
Anugrah took my feedback on a very positive note, and since then has made a conscious effort to take out time and thank the person for taking out time to help him. He proactively sends Thank you emails and expresses his gratefulness for receiving support. He mentions the contribution and support he has received from different colleagues at different forums and internal (ex. Kudo board) and external platforms (ex. he added a special thanks section to add names of people who helped him in the Hackathon idea irrespective of how small or big their contributions were). He has led from the front and tried to inculcate this attitude among the people he directly or indirectly supervises.
To make an impactful career in the field of Product management, he has to work with cross functional teams from engineering, design, business and marketing. To effectively liaison with such a diverse group, he must further improve his relationship building and networking skills and I am confident that the MBA program will catalyze this growth.