Ashish combines a career in marketing (working with giants like Droom Technology, Fareportal, and Everest Industries) along with a relentlessly curious ‘mesh network’ brain for a perspective that analyses what it takes to build a team. It focuses on both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details of the area.
He currently brings that expertise to OYO as the Director of Performance Marketing & SEO - OYO Vacation Homes Europe. In this conversation with us, he shares:
Skills a manager requires to lead a team:
Ashish started his career as an individual contributor. His first task was learning how to execute and getting skilled. Ashish has been managing teams for the past four and a half years. He feels that any career journey starts from learning to managing teams and training people to move forward. A manager should lead his team through inspiration.
With the onset of the pandemic, companies have switched to the digitization of their everyday work. Thus Ashish explains that managers/people managers need to adapt to an attitude of constant learning. Plenty of organizations expect team managers to know multiple skills. For example, a marketing manager should know how to manage digital platforms and run advertising campaigns.
A good people manager goes through four steps while working on a task: (1) does the task, (2) teaches it to everyone, (3) assists them in doing it, (4) yet makes them independent.
Building successful and high-performing teams:
To develop successful teams, managers need to ensure that they train their team members to:
Be more cognizant.
Be self-motivated.
Be analytical.
Have a personal connect.
That is how managers can motivate and push their employees to perform better. Ashish further adds that knowing your team personally is necessary.
Is the term “cultural fit” misinterpreted?
Culture is defined by people, not by organizations. Thus Ashish concludes that the term “cultural fit” is misinterpreted. A startup looks for hustlers in the beginning. They expect one person to have multiple skills and multitask. However, once the organization grows, they start looking for subject matter experts. They want to execute things strategically. Therefore, cultural fit indicates a culture change. Culture is not black or white. It has to constantly evolve with the organization. This change is brought by the people of the organization themselves.
A better description for culture would be “evolving with the needs of the organization.”
Is employer branding as important as product branding?
A candidate needs to know the background of the company before joining it. Thus the purpose of employer branding is to attract the right set of people for the company. It is as necessary as branding products and services to attract customers. There is a huge supply of talent, and choosing the right talent has become even more difficult. The right trajectory, nurturing leaders, and hiring the right set of talent to augment this trajectory- all of this is achieved through employer branding. It can be executed via various channels.
Follow Ashish on LinkedIn
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Yashwanth Jembige
Get the highlights of this episode in our