Dear community,

In the ultimate analysis it is people who make the difference. To organizations, governments, and nations. The leadership of these people makes the difference between success and failure

Religion is the way you treat people
No truly religious person will treat others unfairly. Like needy people give you an opportunity to do charity, people at the workplace are a chance for you to grow people.
To quote Emerson “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

The karma of comrades
If we delve into the theory of Karma for a moment – the belief is that we pick the family we are born into and the circumstances surrounding our life through our karma.
Taking that further, every person’s success or failure is decided by the people around him/her. All our skills come to zero if our people skills are crude.

Every professional should be a people person
Every working person has to deal with people who are juniors, seniors, management, clients, suppliers …

The relationship struck with these groups can decide the growth path of the individual and the organization.

The role of the senior - mentoring
Mentoring has been called ‘The art of achieving through another person’.
A senior has many roles to play where junior talents are concerned. The senior is involved in hiring people, working smoothly with them, nurturing them, and promoting them.

This is where ethics, religious beliefs, professional responsibility, and personal maturity come into play.

Hiring
Are you scrupulously fair when you hire? The ideal would be to stay uninfluenced by any personal bias – caste, language or region. Also assess the highly recommended candidate on par with any other. The recommendation should be seen as an entry point after which everything else equals out. Merit is the only issue.

Working
Have you ever enjoyed work in an atmosphere of fear? What do you do to provide an open, enjoyable atmosphere? And can you do that and still ensure a high quality of work? Easier said than done but the only way to go.
In a world full of choices, fear is no longer a motivator

Nurturing
Disregard personal bias when it comes to giving opportunity to the deserving. Training is to be given to the ones who need it more. In reports to the seniors do you name the high performers and detail out their contributions, or do you take credit by being deliberately vague?

Promoting
Is there a junior who sucks up to you? Or constantly points out the shortcomings of others? Every organization will have a few of those.

These are the insecure ones. They need to be counseled. Don’t use them as a source of feedback on your team or how people see you. You will get only a conveniently distorted version.

Promote based on professional assessment procedures, attitude and potential. It pays off very soon for you and the organization.

Besides which, your conscience will rest easy.

Dealing with your equals – healthy competition
These could be your competitors, this is where the concept of healthy competition comes in. They are still within your organization, it would be better to outshine them and not outfox them.

For example if marketing is doing a brilliant job and the head of customer service is deliberately not doing the same…that is a house divided and will soon shake if not fall.

Or when the content team in a web company is delivering great content, and the tech team is not uploading these, simply by complicating things, as techies can so easily.
There are instances of techies tampering with the internal email accounts of various department heads, to ensure they don’t get memos to prepare for meetings, and end up looking amateurish due to lack of preparation.

Ethics goes out the window, and along with it hopes, ambitions, commitment to the organization and so on.

What goes around comes around
Why risk sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind? Experienced, older professionals will tell you that the scheming, unnecessarily aggressive person usually grows to a certain level, and then stagnates. Without the active goodwill of people around you it is next to impossible to grow to your full potential.

Years from now, old and feeble with life’s work over, you can choose what you will see when you look back. Imagine for a moment, however unpleasant it might be, that the newspaper at some future date is carrying your obituary:

When you look back, at the end of life
Imagine the reactions of the people you work with. Will they tell their families
“He made me what I am today.” Or “Never met a nicer person.”

Or at the other extreme “The old idiot finally died.” Or “Wonder whom he’ll pick on in the next world.”

Now how would you like to be remembered?

The most spiritual definition of leadership seen so far is: “Leadership is the ability to develop leadership qualities in others.”

Regards,

Nikhil