Truly, I am faced with a steep learning curve in Standard Chartered Bank, involving not only financial knowledge but people knowledge. It’s not at all about the quality of work I produce because that is largely within my realm of control. Instead, it’s about managing people at my workplace. Things are no longer as straightforward as they were in school. No one will tell you what is right or wrong. In fact, there’s no right or wrong. In reality, we all know we live in an imperfect world. Hence, knowing how to manage these imperfections is crucial. This is where EQ comes into the picture, more so than IQ. IQ only gets us through the door but it does not account for the uncertainties in life; EQ does.
Coming from operations, I deal with more people than one would think. Unlike other BAs in my programme who stay in a particular business much longer, I rotate close to every month, constantly having to adapt to new teams, bosses, processes, and environment. Every time, it is a whole new experience and challenge. Every day, I am learning to cope with different team dynamics, individual working styles, attitudes and personalities. Indeed, these people do not usually behave the way you wish they would. Otherwise, I would say we live in a perfect world.
On top of projects and daily work, my work revolves around questioning, “why things are being done in this manner”, “how we can better improve processes”. Piecing bits and pieces of information from different groups of people to form a larger sensible picture of the bank and thereafter making sense of it all. Having to deliver a management review presentation at the end of every rotation stresses out me quite a great deal as I have to factor in considerations such as: “ what the bosses want to hear, what my colleagues want to hear, what is good for the company and the purpose of the presentation”. A lot of times, they are in conflict, making it almost impossible to get the message across to these diverse people effectively at the same time.
Coincidentally, I received an interesting course lately– how to facilitate events to achieve its stated objectives. It exposed me to 4 different types of learning styles, namely Activist, Pragmatist, Reflector and Theorist. I scored the highest in “reflector”, followed closely by “Pragmatists”.
As a reflector, I prefer to keep a low profile in discussions, to observe and listen before I make any contribution. When pressured, I can think on my feet to a certain extent but I must say I feel really uncomfortable in such situations. I rather have time to ponder over issues that have been raised, do some thorough research and analysis before I make my stand. :)