If you’ve ever questioned the importance of generalists in your team or if you are a generalist and want to see how your role should be, then check out this well researched and thought out article by Steve Hardy on Creative Generalists.

Some core traits identified by him are:

Wander & Wonder - finding possibility

Entertain curiosity and ask unasked questions.

Synthesize & Summarize - presenting information

Connect the dots and present complex information succinctly

Link & Leap - generating ideas

Take a simple insight and find a transcending application.

Mix & Match - connecting people

Make worlds collide and harness collaborative energies.

Experience & Empathize - understanding worldview

Understand humanity and life’s many interrelationships.

HR professionals in organizations should be mainly be “creative generalists” given the fact that most of the specialised or administrative work can be outsourced and people management responsibilities (recruitment, performance management and the like) rests or should rest with the Businesses’.

How much of your time as a Manager is spent on ‘teaching’?

“He ( Warren Buffet ) later told me that he subscribed to Charlie Munger’s “Orangutan theory”- which essentially contented that, “if a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her idea is, the orangutan just sits there eating his banana, and at the end of the conversation, the person explaining comes out smarter.”" Personal History, Katherine Graham

Peter Drucker too had written and talked about the importance of teaching and its benefits.

Peter Drucker believed that “you don’t know anything unless you teach it”. Drucker himself had taught American history, Japanese art, religion, and statistics. He believed that, “To teach what you don’t yet know helps you learn more than just a new set of facts; you practice the discipline of learning to learn, since new subjects require learning new concepts.”

• Deepa