It
is necessary to know your men (and women) if you want to deliver magic and go
beyond the incremental. The difference between a leader and a manager is stark
even though books have been written to explain it as if it was a fine and
indistinguishable gap.
A
manger sits on a high perch and expects the men to deliver on the ground. So,
they do deliver, but just the way they have been doing and maybe a bit better.
A leader is out there with his team roughing it out on the ground and makes
them climb heights neither they nor he himself ever thought was possible. For a
leader the sum is always more than the parts; in fact, it is not a sum, but a
new number altogether. A leader doesn’t do two plus two to make four; he makes
them march together and makes a twenty-two. Being out there in the field
doesn’t necessarily mean working on that nut and bolt. It means being able to
wield the spanner and show them how it is done if the occasion arises, and in
good faith.
As
one grows in the organisation the size of the team assigned to him grows and a
time comes, when knowing all your men becomes impossible. While it is true that
the team directly reporting to a senior manager (I prefer the term leader) is
still small and it is possible to know them intimately, the satisfaction of
knowing all the men out there diminishes. What does a people’s man, the leader,
do under such circumstances?
What
does a leader do, when there are a thousand men working in the organisation or
ten thousand? This is a question that have been frustrating me for years. Even
as one wishes one could put one’s hand on the fellow worker’s shoulder and ask
about his welfare, health and family, it is not possible as a regular
behaviour. You simply can’t know all of them personally.
But
the reverse is still possible. Nothing prevents your people from knowing you
intimately. It is the next best thing if your men look at you and see in you
“their man”. If you walk among them, each one of them should bond with you even
if you can’t do the same, to the same degree, in return. The biggest proof of
being owned by your men is that one of them, anyone of them, can walk up to you
without fear and hesitation, look into your eyes, and speak with you. Believe
me, the feeling is electrifying.
If
your men break into a smile upon seeing you, if they think they can come to you
with a problem and go back with a solution, if they meet you with sadness and
go back with hope and reassurance, they will deliver magic for you.
This
is not to say that a leader should shirk from taking tough decisions or being
unpleasant when the occasion demands. But when one does that, people
understand.
(Please
pardon my use of the word “men” repeatedly. There is no gender bias, just the
need to let the language flow easily)
