During bus journeys at times you may bump across very irritating people. The other day, I was able to secure myself a seat only towards the rear-end of a mini-bus. The roads and the worn-out shockers of the bus meant that my journey was quite bumpy and my bones & joints were tested once again. I however buried myself in a Ruskin Bond to take my mind-off the excruciating ride. From one of the stops boarded a middle-aged man with receding grey hairline and an outstretching waistline. He sat next to my seat in the opposite row. I and he were separated by a narrow alley. After sometime he stretched his hand across, to rest it on the back of the seat in front of me. He had not only blocked me in my seat but his hands were almost parallel to my face and I started to feel a little uncomfortable. He happened to know the person sitting on the seat ahead of me and started to loudly converse with him. After sometime he fell quiet and started to glance through a newspaper. Then he again patted the guy in front of me and gave him to read a comic strip that he had just read in the newspaper, with a wide grin on his face. His teeth colured by betel leaf were looking as if soaked in blood after a fresh hunt. He held his monstrous-grin till the other guy turned back and gave him a smile back. This turned the grin on the face of the ‘monster’ next to me into a loud roar-like-laughter. More than half of the bus turned back to see what had just shook the earth. But the ‘monster’ continued to be blissfully unaware of his actions and continued with more such misadventures till the end of the journey. By that time, along with my bones, my mind also felt cracking.
The lack of awareness about the implications of one’s actions on others is what makes a person irritating and at times obnoxious. However surprisingly many people suffer from such lack of awareness. When managers in any organization suffer from such syndrome then the impact that it has on his team or department members is always dysfunctional. Managers are key to engagement and one of the first steps towards improving effectiveness is to try to become more aware of one’s words and actions on others. The truth behind the famous adage that ‘people do not leave their organizations, they leave their supervisors (managers)’ makes such awareness even more important.
Recently, Nandini Piramal, Executive Director at Piramal Healthcare Ltd. said in an interview that – “The ultimate in people management is about how you make it a win-win situation for everybody involved. People have to want to do something for them to execute it well. In a way, I don't look at HR as a separate function. How you manage people, how you think about people, their careers — that's what a good manager should do. HR does provide structure in how you think about these things. But ultimately, if a manager doesn't think about these things, he's not playing a manager's role.”
Some of the things that managers usually do without realizing their implications are self-praise, crack loathsome jokes, steal credit, belittle junior colleague in front of the latter’s family, become rigid & bureaucratic, pretend, use wrong language, show cultural-insensitivity, show gender-insensitivity etc.
An airline recently started a system, by which using social media, passengers would be able to determine the person who shall sit on the seat next to him/her. Only if people could do the same in choosing their mangers! But since such an idea seems remote, hence the organizations can do better by training their managers on how to become better co-travelers in the organizational journey.
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