TEDxGSLMedicalCollege was organized on the 14th of September 2019 in Rajahmundry, India by Anisha Valli – a student and the founder of this TEDx event. Aisha gracefully shares the management lessons she has learnt through organizing the experience:

1) It’s terribly difficult to manage unmotivated people.

2) Give help/feedback frequently and directly, not in a Whatsapp group. Better call that person.

3) Communication is the most difficult thing you’ll do. Spend a lot of time on it, both on your own communication and improving the communication of the folks on your team.

4) Don’t underestimate the effect bad team members have on good team members. So, learn to fire the bad people gently and smartly.

5) People need to feel like they’ve been listened to, not to make the final call. Take the time to listen (you might be wrong), then make a decision and explain the decision. Change your decision accordingly.

Providing context for why you made a decision is a way to scale your decision-making process. A major mistake I made in the last few days of the event.

6) Hiring friends or people you know very well can be very useful because communication will be easier, and your friends are probably smart and talented. Hiring people or having a team of 20 that you don’t know is not a good decision (sometimes) but you also meet incredible people that you never thought of meeting. So, it’s all about luck I guess.

7) If you add one person to a new group or task, make sure the rest of the team understands why that person was added and what needs to be done to achieve the same.

8) You’re more likely to lose by not recognizing your weaknesses than from the presence of weakness, so aim for self-awareness.

It’s okay to send rejection emails to speakers whose transcript you didn’t like instead of keeping it in the hold. Learn the art of saying NO

It’s okay if you feel hopeless and burn out. It’s okay if you feel like you are doing a bad job. Create narratives for good. Allow yourself to tell the story of how you changed to become more like the you that you would like to

9) Where you spend money (and where you don’t) communicate what you think is important.

10) Sometimes people talk shit. Sometimes people have bad days. Don’t take either personally.

11) Check on everyone as the event comes closer. Ask team members if they are facing any problems. Don’t assume that they will be telling you without asking.

12) Learn how to use the other talents inside and out of the room to create the best output.

13) One of the most helpful things you can do is remind the team of the bigger picture. Knowing what’s important will help cut through the bullshit.

14) Every relationship should bring you peace. The good things all have trade-offs. It is better to think in trade-offs than in dualities: there is not a best lens. How do you maximize the good parts while cushioning the bad parts of one particular lens? And then what do you get from another lens altogether? There is rarely one lens that will get you where you need to go, but each lens will bring you to a different place.

Separate your identity from your project on macro level. When you start something (or do anything that feels important), it can feel like it will become you. This was a difficult barrier to get over: is this the thing that can define my life? But that’s not how it works. This next project might take one year, five, or twenty, but it is not you. You are a super-set of what you do, not a subset.