Myths and facts behind profiles & stories

If you see the profiles of professionals on LinkedIn, you will realise that everybody there is a leader; not only a leader but also a thought leader. Everybody is a good storyteller & philosopher. 5 out of 10 HR professionals have received Top HR leader, HR thought Leader, HR professional of the year, young professional etc etc. awards in their career. CEOs & CXOs are doing great branding on the platform. Few are writing stories regularly; few are sharing their experience, and few are sharing what they like. Most of them are just copying and pasting though. Few of those professionals are helping others and the overall community by sharing such stories. I am sure most of the companies must have their social media experts working for them, specially for companies and top leaders. Individuals are engaging with others on the platform regularly. On the other side, there are companies who have their own pages and they are also positing positive stories about their organizations.

If you believe in both, individual and organizational profiles and stories they put on the platform, it seems that the world is a better place to live now. Every organization is a great place to work, every company has the best practices, every company has got some or other award in management. Seems, all the problems and worries, company management and employees used to have in earlier days are now vanished.

In spite of having all this, still people are changing their jobs, companies are facing some basic challenges of revenue and cost optimisation. It is obvious situation because of Covid19, but in normal situation company stories look like “हम साथ साथ हैं (we are all together)”

Long back traditional media has enjoyed the status of 4^th pillar of democracy, but now everybody is the author, journalist and storyteller. Content is the king. If you have good content and you know how to present that content, you are powerful. However, you should know how you create & present the content.

I am just referring here about the professional contents and professional social media platforms like LinkedIn. The contents can be presented more positively, but the question is how to make it relevant as a user. Based on those profiles, head-hunters, recruiters approach the candidates for opportunities. Talent gets attracted reading stories presented on company pages and the posts senior managers post on the platform. Leads are generated based on the product information presented on the company pages. However, the main question is how to understand the authenticity of such content. How to understand the person who writes thought leader in his/her profile is really a thought leader. Titles are misleading, roles can be judgemental. People are not aware of what's happening on the market. There are recruiters who think that HRBP is a very junior role and CHRO is junior than other roles in HR, because an officer is always junior than a manager in the corporate world. This is strange to know, but this is the reality. There are facts and there are myths shared daily on the platform by users. Everybody is a marketer. The million-dollar question remains what is authentic. The person who is sharing stories about leadership lessons may be the worst leader actually and he may have the blind spot. The organization which is a great place to work may have issues and employees may have other opinions about the same company.

As said by somebody it is very relevant to think, “दिखावे पे मत जाओ अपनी अकल लगाओ (don’t go by face value & use your wisdom)”. Research more & try to understand the person behind the person and company behind the company.  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle; Vitality in Human Resource

Matured Professional….

I have seen one manager who was very political in the organization. He would create his opinions based on his perceptions. He also would make his opinions based on the feedback given by his cheerleaders. Facts were far away from the reality. Once one of my colleagues expressed her opinion contradictory to the feedback of this person; he changed his opinion about the girl. He told me, “My secretary is better than your subordinate.” The manager was even not ready to recognize the right of others.          

I had always a question about the maturity of this manager. Being 20 years in the organization, he was loyal to his personal agenda of sticking to his position, but he was fully away from the maturity.  People grow but not necessary they would exhibit the “professional maturity”. 

I would like emphasis most of the important dimension of the personality, “Maturity- Professional maturity.”

We always used the term, “Maturity”. Based on our perceptions we labeled “maturity” to the people. We used statements like “Mr. X is much matured professional” or “Mr. Y is effective, but not so much matured, he needs to be developed.” But then how we measure the maturity.

What is the maturity? According to me the maturity can be defined as the acceptance of your role in life which gives you an inner sense of security. Executives need to be constantly aware of this purpose and their state of consciousness. They need to do work to become their mature self.

Mature executives are tolerant of others and respect people’s rights because they realize that one needs talents of a whole team to compete effectively in today’s marketplace.

In the same organization, one senior HR professional, alumni of top b-school was hired so that she would build the strong HR processes. However instead of focusing on the processes, she firstly used the tactic of being popular in the organization by working on increment and paying performance bonus. The rational of paying this was too mechanical and too old which most of the organizations use. When there is not legacy of such things, you are in a better condition to work on concrete processes. She did not. Somehow her tenure didn’t go well and poor HR Head had to resign. The above manager knew the facts but then he started putting the onus of everything to that lady. He was an advocate of formulating processes; he was senior management representative, but still he never supported any initiatives. He was the victim of his ego and his own personal agenda.        

He blamed others for their mistakes. When everything was going good, he used to take credits. If somebody would do best, he was jealous and if somebody would argue with him he was revengeful. Immature executives do the same things.  

Immature executives blame others for their mistakes. They have a need to take credit for new ideas, set up rivalry, are jealous, angry and revengeful. Immature executives have the desire to dominate simply to feed their ego. They don’t have the ability to handle negative feedback or criticism, and have the need to appear intelligent to others.

Beware of these dimensions of immature personality. It will never help you. Professionalism also counts your maturity.

Good boss, bad boss

I worked with different bosses in my career, good, bad, professional and unprofessional. Some bosses were very good and exhibited themselves as role models. Some bosses were terrific and I always surprised, why they were bosses? Who made them bosses?

There is a saying, “You can’t choose your father, but you can choose your father- in -law.” Like this, you can’t choose your boss also. Even you can’t also choose your subordinate sometimes. (If they are not doing well as per your expectations, then you have the choice to make their life miserable and find the replacement.)

I learned a lot from professional bosses. They exhibited real qualities of leader and they proved it in their professional lives. I also learned from unprofessional bosses that how the boss should not be. Good or bad, but all contributed a lot in my professional life.

There were bosses who always were speaking about the professionalism, but their behaviour was totally unprofessional. One of my bosses was TISS alumni, expert HR professional, but was very poor in interpersonal skills. He was treating subordinates as slaves. His day started with shouting on the people in office like on street. Not only on juniors but on seniors including his peers. Due to which he had high blood pressure. His kidneys failed. He was seriously ill due to his habits.

Another boss, (I never accepted him as a boss though) was very insecure in the organization. He was working in the organization for 20 years. His attitude was purely head clerk attitude. Typical example of the manager, mentioned by Sharu Rangnekar in his book “In the wonderland of Indian Managers”. He made a mess by putting his people, cheerleaders, on critical positions.

Ultimately organization got the major setback. Management decided to keep him aside and he was to force to take early retirement. I heard that when he was out of the organization, people in the organization celebrated his exit.

Professionalism is always a subjective term. For one person the definition of professionalism is different, however another person can perceive the professionalism differently. Good bosses understand the basics of professionalism. Nobody is perfect in this world. Shouting on subordinate is not unprofessional according to the boss, but if subordinate asks valid reasons, it is not professional for him. Paying dirty politics is not unprofessional for the boss, but if subordinate express his frustration, it is unprofessional according to the boss.

There is learning from good bosses, how we should be and also from bad bosses how we should not be.

Lot of material is available on how the boss should be. Hence I am putting some qualities of bad boss.

Some qualities of bad boss:

1)Skipping the managers and calling managers’ subordinates very frequently creating suspicious environment.
2)Creating the perception among the employees that management has given them unlimited powers. If authority is giving abusing the same.
3)Encouraging the cheerleaders.
4)Keeping the distance from employees and behaving as the king in the organization.
5)Expecting from the employees to call him frequently and communicate everything.
6)Encouraging backbiting.
7)Creating the fear among the employees about top management and not allowing the employees to have the access to them.
8)Creating the image that “I am the only person in the organization who can make your life easy.”
9)Creating rigid policies, rules and regulations so that there is very less scope for the creativity.
10)Encouraging bureaucracy.
11)Making favours. Deviating policies for specific people. Discriminating. Using the word case to case, (actually means face to face).
12)Less focus on talent and recruiting average people so that they can not challenge him in future.
13)Creating the policies in such a way that he gets all the benefits from company. Stay in five star hotel, using company car and driver, flying by business class and asking employees to follow cost cutting measures.
14)Using the word “I” and never giving the due credit to other people.
15)If somebody goes with good idea, then saying, “you should first study the history of organization; your idea can not work here.”
16)Spoiling the career of employees, sometimes forcing the exit of good talent by playing dirty tricks.
17)Focusing more on papers and not on results.
18)And many more. Please add your list how the boss should not be…..

Sometimes later, we will discuss about good bosses because I have enough to tell about them.

Perspective

“You are forcing me to go out,” he replied back. I received the resignation from one employee. He mentioned that he should be relieved immediately. As per the employment contract he was suppose to give three months notice. He was asking to relieve immediately. Before sending the resignation through e mail, he claimed his all reimbursements, leave encashment. His salary credited to his bank accounts on 1st. He calculated everything and sent the resignation after claiming everything.

I called him, “We are relieving you immediately, come in office, hand over everything, give the company car, laptop. I will ask to do the full & final settlement with three month notice period recovery.”

“Three months notice recovery? It will be burden on me. It means my performance bonus will also go if you relieved me immediately. How can you treat me like this?” He asked. We had the policy if employee is in employment on 31st Dec; he is entitled for the performance bonus for that year.

“Yes. You send your resignation; you put the ball in company court. Now it is up to the company to relieve you. We are relieving you immediately.”

“You are forcing me to go early sir, this is not professional.” He spoke.

I laughed loudly. Same like Krishna laughed when Karna says to Krishna and Arjun on Kurushetra, “Wheel of my chariot has gone, I am weaponless now, and you are killing the weaponless warrior, this is not Dharma (ethical) Krishna.”

Krishna laughed and replied back, “When Pandavas were sent to forest, when Draupadi was insulated in court, where was your Dharma (ethics) Karna?”

“Karna, when you were spoiling the culture by gossiping, when you were doing your personal work during office hours, when you were not giving at your best to the company and you put the papers without serving notice period where was your dharma?” I asked him. He had no answer.

If company forces its rules it is unprofessional, if employee breach the contract it is not unprofessional.

The definition of the professionalism is always subjective.