You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome.
- Julius Caesar,
Act I, Sc 1.
I joined work fresh from college, was assigned trainings for 2 months and then was slotted into a particular module of a new project. The module lead was a first-time manager, coming from a factory background. The office was in a (then) remote location and we had 8 office buses from and to the city (a fourth of today’s size, or even a fifth).
The regular buses would leave office at 5.45 and shuttle busses at 6.30 and 7.30. The man would call me from Europe at my desk phone, exactly at 5.45, to ensure that I had not taken the regular bus home! Despite many late evenings and some all-nighters, the guy who regularly took the 7.30 shuttle in full view of the boss, was the one who got the “exceeded expectations” rating in the team.
He taught me a lot, that first manager of mine. He deeply ingrained in me that I should NOT be the manager that he was! I learnt about the above and many other characteristics that I should not have as a manager myself.
It has been 28 years since then. The world has gone topsy-turvy. Generations of managers have changed.
I thought by now managers have realized this is the knowledge industry and not a sweatshop! People know how to do their work and more than 90% of them do their work as long as they are given the required resources and training. If you be a servant-leader and remove their obstacles, they will deliver every time on their own, without pushing or goading. I have fooled myself into feeling a sense of pride that managers have changed and work with empathy and understanding. I have thought that we have created the next generation of managers who are even better than us in this.
Has anything changed, though? 16-18 hours of work is still celebrated, rewarded and bragged about on LinkedIn! Those who burn-out are still looked down upon and dissed as wussies, in person and on LinkedIn! There is a big show about mental health and fitness but when push comes to shove, they are all pushed and shoved under the budget and schedule carpets.
And now young professionals are dying of work stress! Dying! Three of them, in recent knowledge, taken away because their bosses played God with their careers, belittled them in front of others for having a breakdown and made them work up to 20 hours a day including on holidays and weekends! What great profit and GDP improvement do these people achieve by ruining physical and mental health of their reportees?
Don’t be that manager!
Don’t make your people accumulate their leaves to the point where they would apply for leave encashment or apply for mandatory leaves and still end up working! No amount of work pressure or targets are worth everyone in the team not taking any vacation for the entire year! Encourage your people to take vacations. Encourage them to celebrate and observe their festivals. Ensure that they have their national holidays off. Don’t get them to work on Independence Day and Deepawali until 8.30pm and then go on Twitter to rant about how Indian culture is depleting!
Don’t be that manager!
Don’t call people when they are down sick and ask them to finish that document or that presentation! If you are not competent enough to cover for a reportee on sick days, then why are you in a senior position? Yes, there will be a 5-10% who will fall sick to watch Kohli’s century (or Bumrah’s fifer), but it is worth tolerating them instead of torturing the remaining 90%!
Don’t be that manager!
Empathise with people’s situations, listen to their problems and work with them to find solutions. Nobody wants to tell you their personal troubles because they want to skive off work! You won’t believe the kind of work ethic people will show after you help them out once or twice when they want to take unplanned time off. If you crack the whip and get them to work when their child or parent needs looking after, they will turn into the shirker that you fear they are!
Don’t be that manager!
Yes, there will be project pressure. Yes, there will be all-nighters! Yes, there will be a time when everyone works for 20 hours for 5 or 6 days together! But if you cannot limit those 20-hour days to a max of 2 weeks at a time once in 6 months or so, then it is your failure as a manager. It is your lack of planning for resources, it is your wrong estimation and scheduling! Don’t punish the rest of your team for your incompetence!
And if you are watching the World Cup when your team is slogging 18 hours a day, then you are scum who doesn’t even deserve to be anywhere in the corporate world!
Don’t be that sadistic homicidal maniac! Don't be that slave-driver! Don’t spoil young lives and minds!
Kabir says:
दया-भाव हिरदय नहीं, ज्ञान कथे बेहद ।
ते नर नरक हि जायेंगे, सुनि सुनि साखी शब्द ॥
The ones who don’t have any empathy in their hearts, but only spew
out endless wisdom to others, will go to hell and take their meaningless words
with them!
