Author Archives: sr162187

We spend majority of our time in workplaces and work gets more fun and consequently life, if everyone is nice and helpful and deal with one another in a friendly manner. We should remember, we all are humans in dealing with each other. Being humans, we cannot remain untouched by emotions: love, hatred, envy, jealousy, anger. Yes of course in workplaces, there are office romances, gossips that ruin people’s careers, jealousy over the promotion your colleague received, even though he joined the organization after you. Most of us are taught to keep personal and professional lives separate, one can, may be strike a balance between the two, but they cannot be separate. Emotion does affect one’s work. If one has a sick child or a special needs child at home, work suffers and in the similar way, things that happen at work, one’s colleagues or supervisor’s attitude towards one, or stress at work may drag into your personal lives. Thus as one’s behavior and attitude towards one another affects everyone in the workplace, it is necessary to put one self into another person’s shoe so that there is understanding and harmony in the workplace. A manager has to be compassionate and caring in understanding that a person is a human and may have personal problems or problems at work. Being caring, polite and having empathy with one’s staff rather than being indifferent may also change people’s perception towards work and also motivate and uplift them at times. We all enter into our workplaces determined to give it our 100%, work up the career ladder and have a satisfying career however there are times when we do not feel the same level of enthusiasm and confidence. Either personal problem, age or routine work creeps in and at times, we feel like work is a burden and one cannot wait to leave work as soon as clock strikes five. Work has to a place where we have fun, and see it a source of dignity as well and not just a source of pay check. As we cannot be alienated by our emotions, we should think that it is true for every other person, and we should work with our hearts as well at times. I have had managers who would act in a rude way at times and later come to the staff and tell us, ” Do not take it personally, it is just for business.” Whatever it may be for or wherever, but kindness and compassion has magic elements to it and works wonder in every situation. Work with your head but bring heart along! Good luck with the finals everyone and remember holidays are coming soon.

They say Leaders are born. I like to observe people, the very nuances of people’s behavior; what makes them tick? Sometimes watching kids, I see a kid clearly leading a group of kids. This makes me ponder, is leadership inherent? A couple of years ago, I had read that people who are the first born in their families usually have leadership qualities in them and they seem happy to lead later in their career and their lives. My friend who was in army, however told me something different. He told me that leadership is taught in the army and the leadership skills are developed in their training period. I wondered whether the army instills the leadership skills in  people or develops the leadership that is latent in people.

We read and discussed, whether leaders and managers are different or are they the same? Could one person be both a manger and a leader? From my point of view, managers are what organizations build and leaders are born into situations, especially in critical situations where leaders are needed to stir things up in an organaization and take the organization to a whole new level with his vision and leadership. I have had mangers who were clearly just managers and not leaders. In retrospect, they were infact good mangers and the organization ran smoothly in their management, however if a scenario occured where the organization stumbled into a chaos, we clearly would have needed somebody to come into the picture and fix the chaos, by taking employees out of their comfort zones, pushing them to their limits and capacities and having them adapt to the prevailing scenario. Thus I think organizations with good mangement are stable and thriving while organizations with good leadership are constantly evolving and  reaching higher greounds. This is my take on mangers v. leaders, what is yours?