嘉文博译-写作中心原创写作案例

The greatest achievement in my professional life has been one of personal transformation. I have transformed myself from being a micromanager, who was merely holding a position as a leader with a team of assistants, to actually becoming a proactive and responsible manager that can get the most out of the work teams in my department for my company. I have learned that it is one thing to simply hold the job title of “manager” but quite another to go beyond just holding that title to actually being a leader that can work with and within a team to actually get things done. No manager can do everything by himself or herself, a team effort is required and the manager must lead the team to success. I believe that I have become such a leader in my company.

From a very young age I have always been self confident with a great deal of inner inspiration to accomplish my goals. Because of my earlier disposition, even when I took charge of the operations of the Marketing Department of my company, I fully involved myself in every tiny detailed issue of my daily work. Now when I think about my management methods at the time, I realize that I looked at my employees as only assistants. Under my management, all they were required to do was what I told them to do. They had very little opportunity to think for themselves and almost no motivation for innovation. At the time I was the busiest worker in my department as I tried to micromanage every detail. My employees’ motto became: “I know nothing about it; please wait for my manager to deal with it.”

I was working as hard as I could but it seemed like there was always more that needed to be done. At the time I did not realize that I needed to change. It took a particularly serious incident that occurred while I was away from the office to force me to reevaluate my management methods. My company had taken on the responsibility for a huge engineering project that involved the processing of a very large amount of electrical equipment. This large-scale manufacturing effort had to be finished on a very tight and precise timetable. Before I left to go abroad for meetings on the project, I pre-arranged the entire manufacturing scheme to take place while I was gone. When I returned, I was informed that the entire project had come to a halt just after I had left because of a serious manufacturing design defect. My employees failed to contact me because of insufficient communication between us and could not make any decisions on how to get the project moving forward. Because I had always taken care of all of the problems before, no one was motivated to do something to correct the situation. Everyone felt powerless to do anything. They merely sat around and waited for me to return to fix the problem.

As I looked at the piles of products lying around I realized that it was my fault. I realized that I needed to change my way of thinking as well as the organizational structure of my department. I took a good long look at myself and my management methods to try to understand where I had gone wrong. After some serious introspection I decided that I had to make some changes. The ability to delegate responsibilities and share tasks is an extremely important part of being an excellent manager. I now no longer divide the work into different parts for individual employees. I do not group my people in accordance with their diverse domains as I did before. The entire department now functions as a team unit. Sometimes it is still necessary to divide into several small groups on a temporary basis to meet the varying demands of different projects, but this is done with the realization that we are all working on a common goal. Changing the behavior of my employees was only half of the solution. I have also changed my own behavior on the job by no longer making the decisions for every little issue. I have successfully tried to get my people to take the initiative and to work more positively together as a team. We now have an inspired atmosphere in my department where everyone is eager to participate and to contribute to discussions over our various projects and problems.

I believe that every person has his or her own personal advantages but that does not make them suitable for all circumstances. Nobody is perfect. Anyone who thinks that he or she is perfect is doomed to failure. The person that can take an honest look at himself or herself to find out his or her own shortcomings, as well as their individual strengths, can then use this information to adjust themselves to better fit their circumstances. In my case, I was forced to take a hard look at myself to see why my employees and I were not working effectively and efficiently. It is not easy to be critical of one’s self but it is absolutely necessary to do so to reach his or her full potential. I have been able to transform myself from a detail-obsessed micromanager to become a team leader that can get the best out of individuals to accomplish a common goal. For me, that is the greatest achievement so far of my professional career. I have been able to make this transition to become a more mature manager and leader in my company.