• Question: Is it Stressful knowing people look to you for help because your the leader?

    Asked by Victoria30 to Gina on 21 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Gina Schade

      Gina Schade answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      I did find it very stressful in the beginning knowing that I was responsible for so many people – especially when I had to make important or difficult decisions. Also a lot of the people in my team are older than me – I found this a bit intimidating and was shy at times.

      However, now that I’m more experienced I am far more relaxed and have gotten a lot more confident! As long as I approach each decision logically, I know I’ll make the best possible choices for my team.

      I’ve also learnt that it is essential to talk with your regularly staff to make sure they know what to do, if there are any changes and most importantly – make sure that they are happy.

      Also, I’m not perfect. I’ve made a couple small mistakes as a manager since I’ve worked at Sony – but it was never the end of the world! It’s important to keep this in mind and learn from it 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Tom

    Tom commented on :

    Gina makes some good points in her answer, leadership is a real responsibility and this can be stressful.
    But you only get given a leadership role once your own superiors believe you are ready so there is some comfort in that.
    When it comes to helping people as a leader the best way is as a mentor; not to take over but to oversee. Often the hardest thing is to stand back, let those you lead struggle and perhaps even fail because you know that by doing so they will learn from it and grow. The trick is to give them the freedom to make mistakes and the confidence that you will not judge, but instead support them when they do.
    I remember once have a young engineer working for me who reported a defect on his radar, it was a defect I had seen before and could have told him how to find the source, it would have been up and running again in 15minutes. Instead I said “hmmm, sounds like a tricky one! You better get to work on finding it; keep me posted”
    It took him over 4 hours but he eventually cracked it; in the process he learned more about how his radar worked than he’d learned all month doing routine maintenance. That young engineer is now an officer in the navy leading a department of engineers and, no doubt, doing the same to them as I did to him.
    Leadership is a privilege, stressful yes but also very rewarding.