Leadership and the crap around it:

We come across many “quotes” on internet about leadership. And I think all of those quotes are crap and there is no fucking truth to it. I am tired of coming across hundreds of people on internet who call themselves as leaders. This is my first step in raising my voice against the crap people put up out there in the name of “LEADERSHIP”.

I used to believe that leadership is a character and not a skill. I also used to believe that anyone can learn to become a good leader by working hard towards developing the most essential traits required for leaders. With these beliefs I have allowed so called leaders to play around and fuck up with my life. Once and for all, I have decided not to keep up with this bullshit anymore. I hope you find the next few paragraphs in this article insightful. 

Few years ago, I was hired by a VP at one of the major financial firm based out of Boston. I enjoyed working with this guy although people called him as angry, discouraging, non supporting manager. Surprisingly, I hate it when someone characterizes an individual with just one or two words. He had been in the organization for over 30 years and holds a big portfolio of work and he is famous in his own way. More importantly business partners and senior management trust him. I found these two characterizations very conflicting. On one side people claim this VP to be rude, angry and on the flip side his business partners found great trust in him. Now, I am not some one who would develop an opinion on an individual by listening to their characterization from others. I can only develop an opinion if I spend sometime knowing the person and interact with them on a professional level (at work), personal level(outside work). I have decided to use my traditional approach to characterize my boss. After working closely with my boos for nearly 1 year, I did develop a strong opinion on his management and leadership styles. Similar to every other person that commented on his characteristic traits, I found my boss angry, furious, irritating and annoying. But I also found him empathetic, understanding, supporting and more importantly encouraging. My boos developed trust in me to the level that he found me another job within the firm when it was time for layoffs. I was one of the very few people that were saved from the downfall of my team. 

Fast forwarding few into the future I am a manager myself with 26 direct reports and a big portfolio. I strive hard to do everything my boss did back in the day but my approach is completely different. My new managerial position also gave me access to some of the S suite and C suite level leaders both internal and external to my firm. This also gave me an opportunity to study the concept of leadership and differences between being manager vs being a leader. I spent more than 20% of my time researching on this topic and develop some insights and strategies which i believe will help me to become a good leader one day. Our organization leadership conducts a manager-employee relationship survey at the end of every year where employees are given an opportunity to share their concerns and feedback on their managers. I try to be as honest as I can while filling this survey but I cannot say the same for other employees in my organization. Last year more than 65% of employees reportedly participated in this survey. Few years ago when this survey was first introduced, I presumed that executive leadership is keen to know the true feelings of employees towards their managers and that they will take necessarily steps and actions to promote a healthy manager-employee relationship through the organization. I was wrong. I spoke to many peers in the firm who had similar assumptions as me on the reason for conducting this survey. But surprisingly I found that the management merely reviewed the results of the survey but have not acted based on their findings from the survey. I felt cheated, disappointed and angry at the ignorance of the senior leadership. Many similar surveys and initiatives were taken by the senior leadership of my organization promoting the ideal corporate culture where employees are given the freedom to speak up, share new ideas and not worry about taking calculated risks. Again, I am disappointed, angry and lost trust on the leadership. Adding to the fumes, my boss who was a SVP and head of my department was laid-off approximately an year ago. A new SVP with literally no subject matter expertise and background was hired from an organization that was no where close to the industrial sector my firm was part of. I felt bewildered when I heard the news, but I kept my fingers crossed. Our new SVP made her agenda clear in the first town-hall meeting conducted one month after her arrival. “COST CUTTING” is a single point agenda for my department. My team and my portfolio were the biggest impacted because of the new cost cutting initiatives. I had to let go more than 30 contingent resources and full time employees due to financial constraints. But the most affected are the employees who have joined the firm on H1B visa with a commitment that the firm will provide sponsorship for their employer based green-card application. The new SVP decided against spending extra money towards legal fees and immigration costs. I could not keep quiet on this issue. I did my best to raise my voice and tried my best to save some of my direct reports. Many of my peers raised their eyebrows at my actions, but hey can you blame me for trying my best to save my employees from the most unconditional and uncalculated  decisions taken by the senior leadership of my organization which disrupted livelihoods of tens of families. I continued my pursuit to save my team no matter how hard it hit my emotions. In the end I lost my job. I realize how good my ex boss(the VP who hired me initially) was at saving his team and saving his employees. Here are few things my boss was the best at - 

• He had 100% success rate with project delivery.
• He never let someone downplay the efforts of his team. 
• He was always good at justifying his actions. 
• More importantly he always supported in his team in the toughest situations. 

Almost every single person in senior manager level role interests in setting themselves as an example for how a GOOD LEADER is supposed to be. However they end up being far from reality. Being a good leader is not same as being intelligent or smart to come up new ideas / new initiatives. At the same time ivy league education does not make you a great leader. My organization employs more than 60 E suite executives who struggle too much to make their presence in the organization by coming up ideas to empower women, empower minorities, empower immigrants, empower livelihood of employees, prevent racism, improve globalization, improve livelihood of the firms employees and their families. But how many of these so called E level executives put their heart into these programs? Disappointingly my answer to this question is zero. Yes a BIG FAT ZERO. The leadership has a single point agenda to “Cut Costs” . As some one who manager a portfolio myself, I understand very clearly how and why cost cutting is important. But this is not reason enough to play with livelihood of your employees especially not the livelihood of your line level employees who struggle too hard to keep with the shit life throws around them. Your seniority, experience or your level the organization does not make you a great leader. I know there are thousands of leadership guru’s who claim to offer the best leadership and professional development programs. Well they are effective, at least to the extent that some one understands what it takes to be a good leader and what does an employee look for in a good leader. But one thing I want to point out here is that, a “guru can only teach you how to be a good leader but cannot make you a good leader”. 

“One can never become a good leader without putting their heart into it”

Disclaimer: for privacy purposes i refrained myself from naming my organization or names of those terrible managers / leaders I have come across. 

Thank you for taking time to read through my article. This is the first among a series of articles I will be publishing on this topic. Please subscribe to my blog using the link below. I welcome any questions, feedback or comments. 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/5622867722901248962