Continuing with my learnings from my bosses here are the next 3 important ones from my perspective.
- Kick them but stand by them : I have had two bosses who would literally kick you on your backside every time you made a mistake, but would also stand by you and help you in the time of crisis in helping resolve the matter. I have also had bosses who would shiver at the thought of getting involved in an issue of crisis, but would keep giving you advice on what you should do next from the sidelines, and most times their advice was more disastrous than the situation itself. Crisis has always been part of work that I have been involved with, so having people who did not mind getting involved in the crisis really helped in keeping you calm and senile and doing the right things to resolve the issue. This is one of my most important learning from some of my bosses that has helped me in my work immensely.
- Satisfaction leads to incompetence : Never be satisfied with what you have achieved is something that I personally really liked about a few of my bosses, who would continuously challenge you to doing things better. It ended up haunting all my team members by way of a constant statement from me, i.e., "I am not happy with your performance". But definitely the caveat being that it did not mean they would not recognize the effort put in or the success of those efforts. The thin line was about never letting the team feel that they had arrived and had nothing more to achieve.
- Politics bites back : Some of the bosses who indulged heavily into organisational politics ended up in very difficult situations when the politics got back to them. Key learning hence was to stay away, focus on your goals, set your own standards for yourself and understand and accept that organisational life is not fair, so that you have a way to deal with heartbreaks when people get more than you without deserving it. Hope and pray that some day someone will recognise your true worth and you will get what you deserve, in many cases I have seen that happen.
I hope that some day I would be able to follow all these principles in my work life and be a role model for myself as a boss. Would love to hear other perspectives around the same.
Sanjay
