Ladder to Successful Leader

For progressing peacefully, a professional has to build harmonious relationship not only with his boss and his team, but also with his peer group.

Success and happiness of a professional in organization can metaphorically be explained with a triangle. The area of a triangle does not grow unless all the three sides of the triangle grow in similar proportion. Same is with life. Unless our relationship with our team members, our boss and our peers grow, we can’t be a happy & successful professional. While building relationships with people in world outside is important, it is the harmonious relationship that you build with these three key stakeholders at the work place that will determine your peace as a professional.

Mr. Rangnathan, a very successful entrepreneur shares his personal experience with us, how he improvised himself and his team to  deal with other business units to smoothen the communication between them.

Mr. Rangnathan said;

"In the year 2000, I was working in a telecom company, based at Hyderabad, heading the business control functions. I was very successful not only as an individual, but, my department was also doing exceedingly well. We won awards for being the best department across the country. Though functionally we were competent, within the business unit our department did not emerge as the best support function, the internal customer surveys indicated that our department was considered aggressive and dominating.

Being in an industry that is highly dependent on customer satisfaction, internal customer satisfaction was as important as external customer satisfaction. As a leader of the department I was determined to do something to rebuild the image of the department and to win the hearts of people in other departments. I was convinced that the department is as good or as bad as the leader and the behavior of the leader directly influences the department.

On introspection I realized the following:

• As a leader, with my strong view points, I was dominating in all meetings.
• While my intention was never to pinpoint the mistakes, my actions tended to reflect the same.
• My dominant behavior caught on to the entire team and as a result, the team became aggressive.
• While I used to give solutions, the tone with which I gave the solutions made me unapproachable to others.
• As a leader I was not open to constructive feedbacks and so the team could not take criticism
• As a department we always projected ‘we were right and others were not’. So other departments waited for an opportunity to hit back at us.
• With the feeling that we are ‘watchdogs’ of the organization, we used to question everything, without giving proper reasoning for the same. This resulted in people branding us as problem finders.
• While other departments were not happy, they chose not to antagonize us as they were dependent on our services. This resulted in buried frustrations at ground level, with no trust.

I also realized that if I have to transform the department, first I have to transform myself and I decided to lead from the front. As a team we agreed to follow the four-step formula to transform ourselves – LEAD (Listen, Empathize, Assert and Dependable). Keeping this in mind, I first started imbibing certain key qualities that would make me more approachable as a person and it has a cascading effect on my entire team.

As a Leader	Team
‘Started listening and respecting others’ views	‘Became more responsive to others’ needs
Empathizing with peer views enabled me to focus on the solution that the problem	Started exploring alternative solutions instead of saying a firm ‘no’ to others
Started walking up to other departments, rather than calling them to my desk	Proactive interactions with other team members to discuss issues collectively
Showed genuine interest in implementing the feedbacks to build mutual trust	Too constructive criticism with open mind and was willing to change
Institutionalized quarterly feedback mechanism from all peers	Monthly interactive session with all other departments to iron out pending issues
Put efforts in not criticizing others when in the sway of emotion	Major confrontation in the open between departments were avoided
Without aggression, but with assertiveness, issues were discussed	Never compromised on the process, but while saying ‘No’ reasoning was given
Not only gave commitments, but also ensured that commitments were honored on time	‘Promise less and deliver more’ was the mantra to show we are dependable

As a result of all these measures, TEAM building became the culture of our department. We became not only the best supporting department, but also the most respected department within the business unit. This led to members from other departments wanting to be part of our department. The learning from the whole experience was that more than ‘dominating aggression’; the key to get the respect of other departments is to work with ‘directed assertiveness’.