I met a childhood friend after many years, recently. She was a brilliant student, and joined a bank soon after graduation, as an officer. She worked in different cities of India, often away from family. She mentioned how gruelling the work and work hours have been in her career, how she had put her work ahead of everything else in life, including her health and family; explains why we haven’t met in so many years, she probably didn’t even have space to think of us, the old friends.

Point here is, finally, after all these prime years of her life being given to her organization, she now feels bitter and betrayed. The revelation, she said, came about, when  she was placed in Mumbai where she lived in an apartment by herself, and covid hit. She was affected pretty severely and suffered the issues that came along. She was scared for her life for a while, having a young daughter at home, she said! What was startling was, after about three weeks of reporting sick to her work, all the messages and calls were about when she would be able to come back to work!! That’s when it hit her hard that that is all that her organization cared about, after all!! And she said, “ that’s when I made up my mind to also give only so much of me to my work. I regret having gone above and beyond, all these years!”

She actually took too many years to realize that, indeed.  But why should it be so?  Why make your employees feel sorry for being and giving their best to your organization?  Are they just ‘resources’ that can be replenished and replaced as the needs demand? What’s with all the employee engagement and team building exercises? What was their purpose and intention if they stayed temporary and tentative?!

This is the place we talk about great leaders.  There are but a few organizations which have developed the culture where each employee is valued like a family member, in the true sense, and that intention is there for them to experience.  These are the places you can see them working, with engagement, not out of lack of choice,  for many years and building their lives and careers around them.

We need more leaders, at all levels in an organization who embody that kind of attitude which percolates as culture into the system and inspires the employees to take ownership of their work, take initiatives, be creative and participate in building and growing the organization, take pride in being a valued member of the team, being recognized for the sweat and blood that they put in.  Each employee should be able to identify themselves with the ultimate purpose for which the organization was formed in the first place and feel responsible for satisfying the stakeholders’ needs at all levels. Isn’t that called engagement?

So how does that happen?

• Open culture: One should feel free to air their ideas and opinions without any fear of being snubbed/ridiculed or judged. One should not feel intimidated for any reason, and should be able to discuss their issues with relevant people in the company.
• Trust: Allow for interactions between team members and between teams so that they develop trust enough to be vulnerable, to seek and offer support, know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Clarity of purpose, the Big picture: When the vision of the company is clear and each employee understands who they are serving, they feel connected to the larger purpose and an important cog in the wheel. This removes the ambiguity and feelings of being blindsided when only tasks are assigned and people don’t see beyond, on a project.
• Employees to be treated as people with situations and emotions. For example, if one is dealing with a sick family member and is having to spare a sizable amount of time for a while, the team should be empathetic enough to pitch in and cover for them.
• Feedback and appraisal: Giving and receiving effective and constructive feedback, without fear of rebuttal, which helps people improve themselves and their teams, should become the positive culture of the organization. This should reduce the ‘politics’ being played around that eats up valuable time and energy of everybody, guarding themselves and plotting to push themselves.
• Fertile environment for creativity and growth where  employees feel happy and comfortable in.

It is up to the leaders to develop the culture of trust and comfort for their teams. It is the leaders who should grow beyond behaving only like ‘managers’ who get things done and build the conducive cultures in their organizations. Times have changed, attitudes and aspirations of employees have evolved; they expect more than pay packages from their organizations. Hence the need for leadership styles to evolve too!