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Leadership is all about motivating a group of people towards achieving a common objective, and leaders can only do so only if they enjoy unambiguous trust and respect of their team members. From giving clear and precise feedback to providing guidance on matters of professional interest, the list of things that a leader must do to earn this trust is rather long. However, it is often those leaders who are able to aptly balance the roles of a friend, philosopher and guide, are the ones who find themselves acquiring this pedestal sooner than the others.
Finding this balance can prove tricky for some though. After all, leaders are also humans, and come with the same set of flaws and fallacies, making them vulnerable to what I call the Honey Trap. This isn’t the traditional honey trap, as we know it, but one that carries the potential of derailing a promising leader from his/ her ordained path of glory.
Jaya is an Accounts Director with a major advertising agency and has carved a name for herself in the industry over a decade and a half long career. She is known as much for her people skills as for her proficiency at work, so it was like a dream come true for Nikhil when he got his offer letter from the agency to join Jaya’s team.
In the three years that Nikhil had spent at another firm, he had learnt the tricks of the trade well. He was a sincere and passionate individual with a fiery urge to succeed in his career. Jaya and Nikhil hit it off instantly, doubling up as boss-subordinate and friends as per the demands of the hour.
“He was young, dedicated, sincere and a fun guy… He possibly triggered my motherly instincts and I got attached to him somewhere along the way,” Jaya confided, while sharing her story with me. All was good until one day Nikhil left Jaya waiting in the car park for a long time as they were to head out for a client meeting. He had got into a corridor conversation with one of the other Account Directors, he explained. This did not go well with Jaya, the boss, and she tried to reason with him, but to little avail.
“It’s a small thing, you are reacting too much. If someone wants to have a word with me, I can’t just step away, can I?” he reasoned. This was just the start of the downfall of their relationship.
“I started noticing that he was taking me for granted… He was a friendly person generally, but it seemed as though I was a box he’d already ticked, and he was now going at lengths to gain the favour of others around us. Sometimes even at my expense,” Jaya explained. “I confronted him a couple of times, but he would always brush the allegations off, attributing them to my excessive sensitivity. Perhaps I was being sensitive, but that was only because I truly cared for him and it wasn’t a great feeling that I was nothing more to him than a boss he was supposed to remain at friendly terms with. And maybe he might even have taken my care and concern for something else, who knows!”
Whether it was Jaya’s loss in the long run, or Nikhil’s, is anybody’s guess, but the fact remains that a case of mismatched expectations has turned Jaya into a skeptic when it comes to the people she’s working with. This trap of getting too involved with people is something that leaders need to avoid at all costs. Jaya’s might be an extreme example, but leadership is as much about drawing the line where required as it is about nurturing a healthy bond with those we lead.
First published in Suburb Magazine, Jan ’19 Issue!